Impact
The Linux kernel contained a race condition that occurred when unlinking, removing, or renaming a filesystem entry that was also a mount point. During this operation the code would detach mounts while keeping the dentry hashed and positive. Because no lock prevented a concurrent lookup from seeing the dentry, an attacker could read or interact with files that were previously hidden by the mount. This flaw allowed a local user with permission to unlink a mount point to potentially access underlying data and thereby compromise confidentiality.
Affected Systems
All Linux kernel releases that had not yet incorporated the race‑condition fix are affected. The CNA for the vulnerability lists the vendor as "Linux:Linux" and provides no specific version range, meaning every distribution running an unpatched kernel version may be vulnerable.
Risk and Exploitability
The EPSS score is not available and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog, indicating no publicly known exploits as of this analysis. Nevertheless, the race window spans the namespace unlock and inode unlock periods, giving a sizable opportunity for a local attacker to quickly perform an unauthorized read by racing a lookup against the unlink operation. The lack of a CVSS score makes formal severity hard to quantify, but the ability to uncover hidden data suggests a potentially high impact for privileged local users. Remote exploitation would require elevated privileges or a compromised root account.
OpenCVE Enrichment