CVE-2026-72202: ntfs: avoid heap allocation for free-cluster readahead state

CVE-2026-72202: ntfs: avoid heap allocation for free-cluster readahead state

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@kernel.org>

Description
===========

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

ntfs: avoid heap allocation for free-cluster readahead state

get_nr_free_clusters() allocates a temporary file_ra_state before it
publishes the precomputed free cluster count, sets NVolFreeClusterKnown(),
and wakes vol->free_waitq. If that allocation fails, the worker returns
without setting the flag or waking waiters, so callers waiting for the free
count can block indefinitely.

The readahead state is only used synchronously while scanning the bitmap.
Keep it on the stack and pass it by address to the readahead helper. This
eliminates the early allocation failure path instead of adding a special
case that publishes a conservative count and wakes the waitqueue.
Zero-initialize the on-stack state because file_ra_state_init() only sets
ra_pages and prev_pos.

Apply the same treatment to __get_nr_free_mft_records(), which scans the
MFT bitmap with the same short-lived readahead state.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2026-72202 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Fixed in 7.1.5 with commit 40ee64e633e5e413f2255bb48c063977d8c86f34
	Fixed in 7.2-rc1 with commit c05132077df57a384919f61d7f8a8e76d748a6d4

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2026-72202
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	fs/ntfs/super.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/40ee64e633e5e413f2255bb48c063977d8c86f34
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c05132077df57a384919f61d7f8a8e76d748a6d4