Affected: Linux

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

rbd: fix null-ptr-deref when device_add_disk() fails

do_rbd_add() publishes the device with device_add() before calling device_add_disk(). If device_add_disk() fails after device_add() succeeds, the error path calls rbd_free_disk() directly and then later falls through to rbd_dev_device_release(), which calls rbd_free_disk() again. This double teardown can leave blk-mq cleanup operating on invalid state and trigger a null-ptr-deref in __blk_mq_free_map_and_rqs(), reached from blk_mq_free_tag_set().

Fix this by following the normal remove ordering: call device_del() before rbd_dev_device_release() when device_add_disk() fails after device_add(). That keeps the teardown sequence consistent and avoids re-entering disk cleanup through the wrong path.

The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing v6.13-rc1. The tool is still under development and is not yet publicly available.

We reproduced the bug on v7.0 with a real Ceph backend and a QEMU x86_64 guest booted with KASAN and CONFIG_FAILSLAB enabled. The reproducer confines failslab injections to the __add_disk() range and injects fail-nth while mapping an RBD image through /sys/bus/rbd/add_single_major.

On the unpatched kernel, fail-nth=4 reliably triggered the fault:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN N…