CVE-2026-98988: namespace: keep covered mounts covered in OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE

CVE-2026-98988: namespace: keep covered mounts covered in OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

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

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

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

namespace: keep covered mounts covered in OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE

open_tree(OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE) creates a new mount namespace from a
copy of the tree at the given path. The caller needs to be privileged
over its current user namespace because the new mount namespace will be
owned by it. It doesn't need to be privileged over the mount namespace
the tree is copied from. An unprivileged user just needs to create a
user namespace first.

The copy follows the rules of a detached bind mount. Without
AT_RECURSIVE only the mount itself is cloned and its children are left
out. With AT_RECURSIVE unbindable mounts are skipped. Both is fine when
the caller has privileges over the source mount namespace because it
could unmount those mounts anyway. Not so for an unprivileged user in
that mount namespace. For them a mount namespace copy is what unshare()
does. copy_mnt_ns() copies everything including unbindable mounts and
lock_mnt_tree() makes sure nothing can be unmounted in the copy. Nothing
that was covered gets revealed.

create_new_namespace() only does the locking and so the covered content
is right there in the new mount namespace:

  # mount -t tmpfs none /tmp/otn; mkdir /tmp/otn/covered
  # echo hidden > /tmp/otn/covered/under.txt
  # mount -t tmpfs none /tmp/otn/covered

  uid 1000, after unshare(CLONE_NEWUSER):
  fd = open_tree(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/otn", OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE);
  setns(fd, CLONE_NEWNS);
  open("/covered/under.txt", O_RDONLY)  -> "hidden"

Covering paths with mounts is how container runtimes mask parts of
/proc and /sys and how admins hide things.

When the caller's user namespace doesn't own the source mount namespace
copy the way unshare() does and refuse a non-recursive copy of a mount
that has anything mounted below the requested directory and copy
unbindable mounts in a recursive copy. A caller that is privileged over
the source mount namespace sees no change.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2026-98988 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 7.0 with commit 9b8a0ba68246a61d903ce62c35c303b1501df28b and fixed in 7.2.11 with commit b8a94a405ddcf45e9470789e0a821d8f2aa4ca10
	Issue introduced in 7.0 with commit 9b8a0ba68246a61d903ce62c35c303b1501df28b and fixed in 7.3 with commit 0febe278ec45b1ccdbe9bd5ff1ba365d8fd55e2a

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-2026-98988
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/namespace.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/b8a94a405ddcf45e9470789e0a821d8f2aa4ca10
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0febe278ec45b1ccdbe9bd5ff1ba365d8fd55e2a