CVE-2026-98990 namespace: check a submount for references right before unmounting it
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-98990?
CVE-2026-98990 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 23 Oct 2026.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
namespace: check a submount for references right before unmounting it
shrink_submounts() and mark_mounts_for_expiry() first collect all the mounts they are allowed to unmount and then unmount them.
Whether a mount is busy is decided by propagate_mount_busy() on the tree. But unmounting the first mount changes the tree that the second one propagates into. propagate_umount() moves a surviving overmount off a copy it unmounts and mounts it where the copy was mounted. If that's where the propagated copy of the second victim is looked up the overmount becomes a candidate of the second umount_tree(). It's childless and so trim_one() commits it without looking at its reference count.
So a synchronous umount pulls out a busy mount that is in use somewhere else and marks it MNT_SYNC_UMOUNT while it has users:
umount2(/tmp/plshrink/p1, 0) = 0 errno 0 cwd is (unreachable)
The same two umounts requested one after the other fail with EBUSY. This needs a mount with MNT_SHRINKABLE, i.e., automounted submounts of NFS, AFS and CIFS or the tracefs mount below debugfs. Bind mounts inherit the flag.
Check each mount right before it is unmounted under the same hold of namespace_sem and mount_lock as the umount itself. Make sure that the algorithm stays linear.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98990?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98990?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Is CVE-2026-98990 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98990 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-110828, BELL-CVE-2026-98990, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98990, GHSA-5v88-6pxr-8v5g, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98990.