A pivot_root race condition in fs/namespace.c in the Linux kernel 4.4.x before 4.4.221, 4.9.x before 4.9.221, 4.14.x before 4.14.178, 4.19.x before 4.19.119, and 5.x before 5.3 allows local users to cause a denial of service (panic) by corrupting a mountpoint reference counter. A flaw was found in the Linux kernel’s implementation of the pivot_root syscall. This flaw allows a local privileged user (root outside or root inside a privileged container) to exploit a race condition to manipulate the reference count of the root filesystem. To be able to abuse this flaw, the process or user calling pivot_root must have advanced permissions. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to system availability.
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