CVE-2026-97546 xfs: don't spin forever on zero-length dirents when salvaging them
A local attacker can cause a denial of service by triggering an infinite loop in the XFS filesystem when processing zero-length directory entries.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-97546?
CVE-2026-97546 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 25 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:
xfs: don't spin forever on zero-length dirents when salvaging them
LOLLM noticed that xrep_dir_recover_data can spin forever if it encounters an unused dirent that claims to have length zero. Fix that, and prevent the same thing from happening with a zero-length entry.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-97546?
How do I fix CVE-2026-97546?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-97546 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-97546 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-97546, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97546, GHSA-56gf-pmq5-4wg3, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97546.