CVE-2026-43278 PUBLISHED

dm: clear cloned request bio pointer when last clone bio completes

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 01.05.2026 Published: 06.05.2026 Updated: 06.05.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

dm: clear cloned request bio pointer when last clone bio completes

Stale rq->bio values have been observed to cause double-initialization of cloned bios in request-based device-mapper targets, leading to use-after-free and double-free scenarios.

One such case occurs when using dm-multipath on top of a PCIe NVMe namespace, where cloned request bios are freed during blk_complete_request(), but rq->bio is left intact. Subsequent clone teardown then attempts to free the same bios again via blk_rq_unprep_clone().

The resulting double-free path looks like:

nvme_pci_complete_batch() nvme_complete_batch() blk_mq_end_request_batch() blk_complete_request() // called on a DM clone request bio_endio() // first free of all clone bios ... rq->end_io() // end_clone_request() dm_complete_request(tio->orig) dm_softirq_done() dm_done() dm_end_request() blk_rq_unprep_clone() // second free of clone bios

Fix this by clearing the clone request's bio pointer when the last cloned bio completes, ensuring that later teardown paths do not attempt to free already-released bios.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 3d746b639be4b4f5cd8ce2b06aa52dc443f50edc (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 9a95b98202113045bc1a5bcb30388a500f25e050 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 8d9ddad561136f7e6a9346767bf97b4d79e38e67 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 7daf279c674d515fb22a727a7bbc92aeb35c5442 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to e2e738e8dfbbf83bd2bae0467ec4420cc52da42a (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to b1c1a2637ebd675aa2d71fee8c70da8791d73850 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 83d72091804600ead96dc9e9f518ea56cb4942f6 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to fb8a6c18fb9a6561f7a15b58b272442b77a242dd (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • unaffected from 5.10.252 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.202 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.165 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.128 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.75 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.16 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.6 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0 to * (incl.)

References