# CVE-2026-90181: ublk: avoid teardown retry loop on xarray allocation failure

> A local attacker can cause a denial of service in the Linux kernel ublk driver by triggering an infinite retry loop during device teardown when memory allocation fails.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 17 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 19 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2026-90181, GHSA-6q49-r2pp-pjwc, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-90181

## What is CVE-2026-90181?

CVE-2026-90181 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 17 Sep 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:

ublk: avoid teardown retry loop on xarray allocation failure

__ublk_shmem_remove_ranges() removes matching maple tree ranges in
batches, but first stores each range into a temporary xarray so that the
pages can be unpinned after dropping the maple tree lock.

That temporary xarray is filled under the maple tree lock with
xa_store(..., GFP_ATOMIC). If the store fails before mas_erase(), the
current range is left in the tree and the helper returns false. The
outer ublk_shmem_remove_ranges() loop then immediately retries the same
range. While the atomic allocation keeps failing, the teardown path has
no forward progress.

The issue can be reproduced with radix_tree_node failslab injection after
a SHMEM_ZC buffer has already been registered:

  # Kernel config:
  #   CONFIG_BLK_DEV_UBLK=y
  #   CONFIG_DEBUG_FS=y
  #   CONFIG_FAULT_INJECTION=y
  #   CONFIG_FAULT_INJECTION_DEBUG_FS=y
  #   CONFIG_FAILSLAB=y

  echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
  mkdir -p /tmp/htlb
  mount -t hugetlbfs none /tmp/htlb
  fallocate -l 4M /tmp/htlb/ublk_buf

  dev_id=$(kublk add -t null --shmem_zc \
		--htlb /tmp/htlb/ublk_buf |
	   awk -F '[ :]' '/dev id/ {print $3}')

  echo 1 > /sys/kernel/slab/radix_tree_node/failslab
  echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/cache-filter
  echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/ignore-gfp-wait
  echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/interval
  echo -1 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/times
  echo 100 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/probability

  kublk del -n "$dev_id"

On the unfixed kernel the delete command was still running after 3
seconds. Disabling failslab made it return. The fault-injection stack
showed:

  should_failslab
  kmem_cache_alloc_lru_noprof
  __xas_nomem
  __xa_store
  xa_store
  __ublk_shmem_remove_ranges
  ublk_cdev_rel
  ublk_ctrl_del_dev

Remove the allocation from the teardown loop. Keep the existing batch
limit, but collect {base_pfn, nr_pages} pairs in a fixed-size stack array.
Once a matching range is found, the range is erased from the maple tree
before dropping the lock, so each successful scan makes progress without
depending on any GFP_ATOMIC allocation.

With the same failslab settings, the fixed kernel completed
"kublk del -n $dev_id" successfully in about 45 ms.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-90181?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-90181?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-90181 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-90181 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-90181 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-90181 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 17 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-90181 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-90181/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-90181/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-90181
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-90181
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-90181

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-90181/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.