A recent change in the Linux kernel’s VFS layer caused the may_open() routine to treat certain special inodes—such as device, FIFO, or socket entries—as regular files by assigning them the S_IFREG type. This misclassification can enable a process that normally should not have full file semantics to open and interact with these special objects as if they were ordinary data files, potentially exposing or altering data that should remain protected by the original inode type.

Based on the available information, it is inferred that all Linux kernel binaries derived from the mainline source tree that have not yet incorporated commit af153bb63a33 remain vulnerable. The issue is vendor‑agnostic and applies to the generic Linux:Linux product. No stable kernel release that contains the fix is listed, so any system running an older kernel remains vulnerable until the patch is applied.

The CVSS score is 5.5, indicating moderate severity, and the EPSS score is less than 1%. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog, suggesting that no publicly known exploit is currently documented. The likely attack vector is local – an attacker would need the ability to access the filesystem and execute or influence code that triggers the misclassification in may_open().