CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-46040

Vulnerability intelligence

Published May 27, 2026Sources checked Nov 11, 2026

5.5MEDIUMCVSS out of 10

What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-46040 and is rated Medium severity with a CVSS score of 5.5. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.

What to do next

Remediation and response

Microsoft Security Response Center guidance

Vendor revision: Jun 9, 2026

CBL-Mariner Releases

Vendor-listed releases

6.6.141.1-1

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog

EPSS0.1%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability

Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field

Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships

Overview

What is CVE-2026-46040?

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.

Source: NVD