CVE-2026-43053

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's XFS filesystem. During the inactivation of inodes with extended attributes, a specific timing window exists where a log shutdown can occur after some data blocks are invalidated but before the attribute map is fully truncated. This can lead to inconsistencies where the filesystem attempts to access unreplayed or stale metadata blocks upon recovery. Consequently, this triggers a metadata verification failure, resulting in filesystem corruption and a system shutdown, effectively causing a Denial of Service (DoS).

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate impact for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because triggering the condition requires an ungraceful system termination or log shutdown during extended attribute truncation, limiting the blast radius to local file system availability rather than arbitrary code execution or data leakage. Although XFS serves as the default storage format across supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases, an attacker cannot directly trigger the metadata inconsistency without inducing a forced crash during specific inode inactivation operations. Consequently, the flaw presents a denial-of-service risk through metadata verification failures upon recovery, while confidentiality and integrity remain uncompromised.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.