CVE-2026-46040

About vulnerability

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

inotify: fix watch count leak when fsnotify_add_inode_mark_locked() fails

When fsnotify_add_inode_mark_locked() fails in inotify_new_watch(), the error path calls inotify_remove_from_idr() but does not call dec_inotify_watches() to undo the preceding inc_inotify_watches(). This leaks a watch count, and repeated failures can exhaust the max_user_watches limit with -ENOSPC even when no watches are active.

Prior to commit 1cce1eea0aff (“inotify: Convert to using per-namespace limits”), the watch count was incremented after fsnotify_add_mark_locked() succeeded, so this path was not affected. The conversion moved inc_inotify_watches() before the mark insertion without adding the corresponding rollback.

Add the missing dec_inotify_watches() call in the error path.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 5.14.0 (+11 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.