Vulnerability in Linux kernel (CVE-2026-43338)
Summary
Vulnerability in Linux kernel (CVE-2026-43338). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
Original description
The description as published by the source.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
btrfs: reserve enough transaction items for qgroup ioctls
Currently our qgroup ioctls don't reserve any space, they just do a
transaction join, which does not reserve any space, neither for the quota
tree updates nor for the delayed refs generated when updating the quota
tree. The quota root uses the global block reserve, which is fine most of
the time since we don't expect a lot of updates to the quota root, or to
be too close to -ENOSPC such that other critical metadata updates need to
resort to the global reserve.
However this is not optimal, as not reserving proper space may result in a
transaction abort due to not reserving space for delayed refs and then
abusing the use of the global block reserve.
For example, the following reproducer (which is unlikely to model any
real world use case, but just to illustrate the problem), triggers such a
transaction abort due to -ENOSPC when running delayed refs:
$ cat test.sh
#!/bin/bash
DEV=/dev/nullb0
MNT=/mnt/nullb0
umount $DEV &> /dev/null
Limit device to 1G so that it's much faster to reproduce the issue.
mkfs.btrfs -f -b 1G $DEV
mount -o commit=600 $DEV $MNT
fallocate -l 800M $MNT/filler
btrfs quota enable $MNT
for ((i = 1; i <= 400000; i++)); do
btrfs qgroup create 1/$i $MNT
done
umount $MNT
When running this, we can see in dmesg/syslog that a transaction abort
happened:
[436.490] BTRFS error (device nullb0): fai…
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database NVD GitHub Advisory
Auto-generated summary
Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.
A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-43338 has been found in Linux kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. CVSS score: 5.5/10.
What to do: apply the vendor's official patched release.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Linux kernel CVE-2026-43338" on the vendor's site.
CVE-2026-43338 (Linux kernel) — CVSS v3 5.5
Attack vector: local / no user interaction
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.
A vulnerability (unclassified) exists in Linux kernel.
Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of Linux kernel.
Severity: Medium (CVSS 5.5/10). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
Update to the patched release per vendor advisory.
Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.
Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Audit SBOM/dependencies to find affected services.
Response actions
Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order
-
1Identify exposure identify
Audit SBOM/dependencies for affected components.資産台帳・SBOM・依存マニフェストで Linux kernel を使っているサービスとバージョンを洗い出す。
-
2Post-deployment verification verify
Confirm patched version is live in productionパッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。
Affected packages
Fix status by distribution
Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE
- BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2026-43338 linux-lts
- Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43338 linux
- Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43338 linux
References
- advisory nvd.nist.gov
- advisory github.com
- package git.kernel.org
- web git.kernel.org
- web git.kernel.org
- web git.kernel.org
- web git.kernel.org
- web github.com