CVE-2026-23297: nfsd: Fix cred ref leak in nfsd_nl_threads_set_doit().

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-23297 is a medium (CVSS 5.5) vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 25-03-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 11-05-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nfsd: Fix cred ref leak in nfsd_nl_threads_set_doit(). syzbot reported memory leak of struct cred. [0] nfsd_nl_threads_set_doit() passes get_current_cred() to nfsd_svc(), but put_cred() is not called after that. The cred is finally passed down to _svc_xprt_create(), which calls get_cred() with the cred for struct svc_xprt. The ownership of the refcount by get_current_cred() is not transferred to anywhere and is just leaked. nfsd_svc() is also called from write_threads(), but it does not bump file->f_cred there. nfsd_nl_threads_set_doit() is called from sendmsg() and current->cred does not go away. Let's use current_cred() in nfsd_nl_threads_set_doit(). [0]: BUG: memory leak unreferenced object 0xffff888108b89480 (size 184): comm "syz-executor", pid 5994, jiffies 4294943386 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc 369454a7): kmemleak_alloc_recursive include/linux/kmemleak.h:44 [inline] slab_post_alloc_hook mm/slub.c:4958 [inline] slab_alloc_node mm/slub.c:5263 [inline] kmem_cache_alloc_noprof+0x412/0x580 mm/slub.c:5270 prepare_creds+0x22/0x600 kernel/cred.c:185 copy_creds+0x44/0x290 kernel/cred.c:286 copy_process+0x7a7/0x2870 kernel/fork.c:2086 kernel_clone+0xac/0x6e0 kernel/fork.c:2651 __do_sys_clone+0x7f/0xb0 kernel/fork.c:2792 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xa4/0xf80 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

• CWE-401Missing Release of Memory after Effective LifetimeThe product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.