In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: virtio-fs: avoid double-free on failed queue setup virtio_fs_setup_vqs() allocates fs->vqs and fs->mq_map before calling virtio_find_vqs()

Overview

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

virtio-fs: avoid double-free on failed queue setup

virtio_fs_setup_vqs() allocates fs->vqs and fs->mq_map before calling virtio_find_vqs(). If virtio_find_vqs() fails, the error path frees both pointers and returns an error to virtio_fs_probe().

virtio_fs_probe() then drops the last kobject reference, and virtio_fs_ktype_release() frees fs->vqs and fs->mq_map again. This leaves dangling pointers in struct virtio_fs and can trigger a double-free during probe failure cleanup.

Set fs->vqs and fs->mq_map to NULL immediately after kfree() in the virtio_fs_setup_vqs() error path so that the later kobject release sees an uninitialized state and kfree(NULL) becomes harmless.

This can be reproduced when a broken virtio-fs device advertises more request queues than the transport actually provides. In that case virtio_find_vqs() fails while setting up the extra queue, and the probe path reaches the double-free cleanup sequence.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.

Vendor advisories

• Red Hat VEX · Moderate · affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · no fix planned: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · updated 2026-09-28 · vex