Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2026-43278 json

dm: clear cloned request bio pointer when last clone bio completes

published 2026-05-06 6 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2026-27674

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 1%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

dm: clear cloned request bio pointer when last clone bio completes

Stale rq->bio values have been observed to cause double-initialization of cloned bios in request-based device-mapper targets, leading to use-after-free and double-free scenarios.

One such case occurs when using dm-multipath on top of a PCIe NVMe namespace, where cloned request bios are freed during blk_complete_request(), but rq->bio is left intact. Subsequent clone teardown then attempts to free the same bios again via blk_rq_unprep_clone().

The resulting double-free path looks like:

nvme_pci_complete_batch() nvme_complete_batch() blk_mq_end_request_batch() blk_complete_request() // called on a DM clone request bio_endio() // first free of all clone bios ... rq->end_io() // end_clone_request() dm_complete_request(tio->orig) dm_softirq_done() dm_done() dm_end_request() blk_rq_unprep_clone() // second free of clone bios

Fix this by clearing the clone request's bio pointer when the last cloned bio completes, ensuring that later teardown paths do not attempt to free already-released bios.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.165, 6.6.128, 6.12.75, 6.18.16, 6.19.6, 7.0
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.170-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.85-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.19.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43278

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-134.134
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1060.63
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1063.69
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1058.64
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1060.61
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1063.71
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1045.48
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1060.64

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43278

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1.21.36
  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-52.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1 6.4.0-52.1.21.34
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.37.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:23481-1SUSE-SU-2026:23477-1SUSE-SU-2026:23529-1SUSE-SU-2026:23528-1SUSE-SU-2026:23237-1SUSE-SU-2026:23068-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.37.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21555-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-43278 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: dm: clear cloned request bio pointer when last clone bio completes

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “To mitigate this issue, prevent the dm_mod module from being loaded. See https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for instructions.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available, no fix planned “To mitigate this issue, prevent the dm_mod module from being loaded. See https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for instructions.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: workaround, no fix available “To mitigate this issue, prevent the dm_mod module from being loaded. See https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for instructions.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
24 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.