---
id: CVE-2026-98318
title: |-
  In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

  smb: client: validate absolute native symlink targets before NT fixups

  With symlinkroot unset, an absolute target is copied without conversion
  to an NT drive path
summary: |-
  In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

  smb: client: validate absolute native symlink targets before NT fixups

  With symlinkroot unset, an absolute target is copied without conversion
  to an NT drive path. Lat…
severity: high
cvss: 7.8
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'
vendor: Linux
product: Linux
affected:
  - >-
    Linux >= 3363da82e02f1bddc54faa92ea430c6532e2cd2e <
    6913ff607c2bc8694193e1fcc40bf16d75f35f16
  - >-
    Linux >= 3363da82e02f1bddc54faa92ea430c6532e2cd2e <
    23c240d9509e15f72e4112fc95f0160ab32ec430
  - Linux b6ea7b6c6be65149ab6b8e37a9dd1671f76add1b
  - Linux >= 6.15.6 < 6.16
  - Linux 6.16
published: '2026-10-06'
updated: '2026-10-07'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-07T07:17:08.727'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-98318'
references:
  - url: 'https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/23c240d9509e15f72e4112fc95f0160ab32ec430'
    label: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
  - url: 'https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6913ff607c2bc8694193e1fcc40bf16d75f35f16'
    label: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
tags:
  - nvd
  - cve.org
epss: 0.00162
epssPercentile: 0.04846
ingestedAt: '2026-10-06T08:50:17.408Z'
---

## Overview

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

smb: client: validate absolute native symlink targets before NT fixups

With symlinkroot unset, an absolute target is copied without conversion
to an NT drive path. Later code still assumes an NT prefix is present
when modifying the target and calculating the print name length.

For "/ab", this causes two failures: sym[5] and path[5] are written
past their allocations, and plen -= 2 * poff subtracts an assumed
8-byte prefix from a 6-byte UTF-16 target, wrapping u16 plen to 65534.
That underflow causes another overflow: memcpy() copies 65534 bytes
into a 24-byte buffer. A user with write access to a mounted share
can trigger these bugs with default settings.

Validate the NT drive prefix, including an ASCII drive letter, before
accessing fixed offsets or subtracting the prefix length.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.