CVE-2026-72198 ntfs: reject non-resident records for resident-only attributes
Attackers can trigger memory corruption in the Linux kernel NTFS driver by providing malformed non-resident records for resident-only attributes.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-72198?
CVE-2026-72198 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 15 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ntfs: reject non-resident records for resident-only attributes
The shared lookup-time attribute validator rejects non-resident $FILE_NAME and $VOLUME_NAME records because their formats require resident values and callers handle returned records as resident attributes. Other resident-only attribute types still pass through the generic non-resident mapping-pairs checks.
That leaves real resident/non-resident union confusion paths. Inode load looks up $STANDARD_INFORMATION and then reads data.resident.value_offset without checking a->non_resident. ntfs_inode_sync_standard_information() does the same when updating the standard information value. ntfs_write_volume_flags() also looks up $VOLUME_INFORMATION and reads data.resident.value_offset directly. $INDEX_ROOT callers in dir.c and index.c depend on the same lookup contract before consuming the resident index root value.
Reject non-resident records for all resident-only attribute types in the shared validator. Keep the existing $FILE_NAME and $VOLUME_NAME behavior, but factor it through a helper and extend it to $STANDARD_INFORMATION, $OBJECT_ID, $VOLUME_INFORMATION, $INDEX_ROOT, and $EA_INFORMATION. For $OBJECT_ID and $EA_INFORMATION this is contract hardening for resident-only formats; this patch only rejects the non-resident form and does not add new resident value validation for those types.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72198?
How do I fix CVE-2026-72198?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2026-72198 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72198 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-96153, BELL-CVE-2026-72198, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72198, GHSA-v45q-rmh4-rr86, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72198.