CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-98451

Vulnerability intelligence

Published Oct 18, 2026Sources checked Oct 21, 2026

N/ACVSS not listedScore unavailable

What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-98451. 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: Oct 20, 2026

Release Notes

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog

EPSS0.2%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability

Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field

Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships

Overview

What is CVE-2026-98451?

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

smb: client: use finish_no_open() for non-regular inodes

An O_CREAT open can find an existing symlink or another non-regular inode. cifs_atomic_open() calls finish_open() on it and attaches a cifsFileInfo. Symlink inodes have no CIFS release operation, so the dentry reference held by cifsFileInfo is leaked.

FMODE_OPENED also prevents the VFS from following the symlink.

Track whether cifs_do_create() returned an open server handle. For non-regular inodes, close the handle if present, remove the pending open, and call finish_no_open() so the VFS can continue the lookup.

Do not set FMODE_CREATED unless a regular file was opened. For O_NOFOLLOW with __O_REGULAR, return -ELOOP before the VFS's -EFTYPE check.

Defer closing a legacy POSIX handle on a non-regular inode until after inode lookup. This avoids closing it again if lookup fails.

Source: NVD