CVE-2026-46002CVE-2026-46002

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext2: reject inodes with zero i_nlink and valid mode in ext2_iget() ext2_iget() already rejects inodes with i_nlink == 0 when i_mode is zero or i_dtime is set, treating them as deleted. However, the case of i_nlink == 0 with a non-zero mode and zero dtime slips through. Since ext2 has no orphan list, such a combination can only result from filesystem corruption - a legitimate inode deletion always sets either i_dtime or clears i_mode before freeing the inode. A crafted image can exploit this gap to present such an inode to the VFS, which then triggers WARN_ON inside drop_nlink() (fs/inode.c) via ext2_unlink(), ext2_rename() and ext2_rmdir(): WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 609 at fs/inode.c:336 drop_nlink+0xad/0xd0 fs/inode.c:336 CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 609 Comm: syz-executor Not tainted 6.12.77+ #1 Call Trace: <TASK> inode_dec_link_count include/linux/fs.h:2518 [inline] ext2_unlink+0x26c/0x300 fs/ext2/namei.c:295 vfs_unlink+0