CVE-2026-89695

nfsd: cap decoded POSIX ACL count to bound sort cost

State
Published
Severity
7.5 High
Published
Sep 11, 2026
Updated
Oct 19, 2026
Reserved
Sep 11, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

nfsd: cap decoded POSIX ACL count to bound sort cost

nfsd4_decode_posixacl() reads a u32 entry count off the wire and passes it straight to posix_acl_alloc() and sort_pacl_range(). The latter is an O(n^2) bubble sort, so a client-chosen count drives unbounded CPU in the server's compound processing path.

nfsd4_decode_posixacl() xdr_stream_decode_u32(&count) /* uncapped u32 */ posix_acl_alloc(count, GFP_KERNEL) sort_pacl_range(*acl, 0, count - 1) /* O(n^2) bubble sort */

The encoder side in the same file already rejects ACLs whose a_count exceeds NFS_ACL_MAX_ENTRIES, but the decoder introduced in commit 5fc51dfc2eb1 ("NFSD: Add support for XDR decoding POSIX draft ACLs") omitted the symmetric check.

Fix by rejecting a wire count greater than NFS_ACL_MAX_ENTRIES with nfserr_inval, before any allocation, so the sort is bounded by NFS_ACL_MAX_ENTRIES^2 comparisons.

While we're in here, also fix the nfserr_resource return if posix_acl_alloc() fails. That's not a legal error code for v4.1+. Change it to return nfserr_jukebox as that's more appropriate for memory allocation failures.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 5fc51dfc2eb160bd7ab3251ab1767cacf9c8bf05 to before ea14d71d6ecb925673761bcf79f781f7dc9042ccAffected
  • 5fc51dfc2eb160bd7ab3251ab1767cacf9c8bf05 to before 4bc1108e876153a2dd6d874052b99182c3603135Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 7.0Affected
  • before 7.0Not affected
  • 7.2.4 through 7.2.*Not affected
  • 7.3 and laterNot affected

References

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