CVE-2026-98844 PUBLISHED

netfs: clear post-EOF pagecache when extending a file via write

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 18.10.2026 Updated: 18.10.2026

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

netfs: clear post-EOF pagecache when extending a file via write

Fix netfs to erase the contents of a hole created after the EOF by an ordinary write if dirty data has been previously left there by writes through an mmapped region. Neither the buffered nor the unbuffered/DIO write path clears that stale pagecache.

Zero the tail of the folio straddling the EOF before an extending write. That is the only folio that can hold data written past the EOF through an mmap, as pages wholly beyond the EOF can't be faulted in. The folio is zeroed rather than dropped so a concurrent extending write can't lose data.

Both write paths downgrade the i_rwsem to shared, so extending writes can run concurrently and the i_size read by the caller may be stale by the time the folio is locked. Re-read i_size under the folio lock and clamp the zeroed range up to it, so a racing write that already put data into the folio isn't clobbered.

Wait for any writeback on the folio to finish before zeroing it so that the pagecache isn't modified while it may still be read by the transport during transmission. Honour IOCB_NOWAIT by returning -EAGAIN rather than blocking on the folio lock, on writeback, or in folio_mkclean()'s rmap walk when the folio is mapped.

truncate_pagecache() can't be used here: it must be called with the i_rwsem held exclusively, but these write paths only hold it shared, and it would block unconditionally, breaking IOCB_NOWAIT.

Callers that hold i_rwsem exclusively for the whole resize (truncate, setattr, fallocate, clone) exclude any genuine concurrent buffered writer, so staleness can instead be decided from the folio's dirty state, as pagecache_isize_extended() already does for filesystems that serialise writes against truncate/setattr via a single i_rwsem. Export netfs_clear_stale_post_isize() helper to handle such case.

The helper is required by the CIFS client to fix generic/363.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 153a9961b551101cd38e94e26cd92fbfd198b19b to f8f7d86b3537e885ee620898a38b749fba8a8456 (excl.)
  • affected from 153a9961b551101cd38e94e26cd92fbfd198b19b to 98f6a4589e0f5f6cf819b8dd45605efc481c06ce (excl.)
  • affected from 153a9961b551101cd38e94e26cd92fbfd198b19b to a7036a73671fc83d299bc770710fe996d9fef9ca (excl.)
  • affected from 153a9961b551101cd38e94e26cd92fbfd198b19b to 69bf14300b50631e7c2271289d347bbd1b19a06c (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.8 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.8 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.113 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.56 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.10 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc6 to * (incl.)

References