CVE-2026-31446

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

ext4: fix use-after-free in update_super_work when racing with umount

Commit b98535d09179 ("ext4: fix bug_on in start_this_handle during umount filesystem") moved ext4_unregister_sysfs() before flushing s_sb_upd_work to prevent new error work from being queued via /proc/fs/ext4/xx/mb_groups reads during unmount. However, this introduced a use-after-free because update_super_work calls ext4_notify_error_sysfs() -> sysfs_notify() which accesses the kobject's kernfs_node after it has been freed by kobject_del() in ext4_unregister_sysfs():

update_super_work ext4_put_super

                               ext4_unregister_sysfs(sb)
                                 kobject_del(&sbi->s_kobj)
                                   __kobject_del()
                                     sysfs_remove_dir()
                                       kobj->sd = NULL
                                     sysfs_put(sd)
                                       kernfs_put()  // RCU free

ext4_notify_error_sysfs(sbi) sysfs_notify(&sbi->s_kobj) kn = kobj->sd // stale pointer kernfs_get(kn) // UAF on freed kernfs_node ext4_journal_destroy() flush_work(&sbi->s_sb_upd_work)

Instead of reordering the teardown sequence, fix this by making ext4_notify_error_sysfs() detect that sysfs has already been torn down by checking s_kobj.state_in_sysfs, and skipping the sysfs_notify() call in that case. A dedicated mutex (s_error_notify_mutex) serializes ext4_notify_error_sysfs() against kobject_del() in ext4_unregister_sysfs() to prevent TOCTOU races where the kobject could be deleted between the state_in_sysfs check and the sysfs_notify() call.