chmod failure via uninitialized ACL reserved field
Published May 28, 2026 · Updated May 28, 2026
Use of uninitialized data in the Linux kernel SMB client allows local users to make chmod operations fail with EINVAL on CIFS mounts. The build_sec_desc() function allocates the security descriptor with kmalloc() and never writes the two-byte Sbz2 reserved field, so slab contents enter the ACL. The failure occurs when a local user changes permissions on a CIFS mount and the reserved bytes are nonzero; Samba rejects the descriptor, interrupting only that chmod request.
Summary
What happened
Use of uninitialized data in the Linux kernel SMB client allows local users to make chmod operations fail with EINVAL on CIFS mounts. The build_sec_desc() function allocates the security descriptor with kmalloc() and never writes the two-byte Sbz2 reserved field, so slab contents enter the ACL. The failure occurs when a local user changes permissions on a CIFS mount and the reserved bytes are nonzero; Samba rejects the descriptor, interrupting only that chmod request.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-46139
- Published
- May 28, 2026
- Updated
- May 28, 2026
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux Kernel
- Classifications
- CWE-908
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 28, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 28, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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- Affected versionversion=1593ddb37bd124c131fe635397df68e854a03108 <4c3ed344a970aad51388ac3b0145b98318f0e21f
- Affected versionversion=191f2f444745087c3c51fd6042a0e25f42315ab0
- Affected versionversion=6.12.23 <6.12.88
- Affected versionversion=6.13.11 <6.14
- Affected versionversion=6.14
- Affected versionversion=62e7dd0a39c2d0d7ff03274c36df971f1b3d2d0d <5e489c6c47a2ac15edbaca153b9348e42c1eacab
- Affected versionversion=62e7dd0a39c2d0d7ff03274c36df971f1b3d2d0d <9bdb2ca31368b7671949dfb94a5d57ffccd01edd
- Affected versionversion=62e7dd0a39c2d0d7ff03274c36df971f1b3d2d0d <be1ef9512a3f5a755895c24f31b334342f4aa15b
- Affected versionversion=da087905e3270e2291c0afae39a28e7d183e5ec3 <941a1e6eb35440336913afc88a82103291956d5d
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