CVE-2025-68788: fsnotify: do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events on child for special files

1. In CISA KEV: not seen
2. Exploited (reported): not seen
3. Scanning observed: not seen
4. Proof of concept public: not seen
5. Not establishedNothing in the sources we check

DescriptionNVD

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fsnotify: do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events on child for special files inotify/fanotify do not allow users with no read access to a file to subscribe to events (e.g. IN_ACCESS/IN_MODIFY), but they do allow the same user to subscribe for watching events on children when the user has access to the parent directory (e.g. /dev). Users with no read access to a file but with read access to its parent directory can still stat the file and see if it was accessed/modified via atime/mtime change. The same is not true for special files (e.g. /dev/null). Users will not generally observe atime/mtime changes when other users read/write to special files, only when someone sets atime/mtime via utimensat(). Align fsnotify events with this stat behavior and do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events to parent watchers on read/write of special files. The events are still generated to parent watchers on utimensat(). This closes some side-channels that could be possibly used for information exfiltration [1]. [1] https://snee.la/pdf/pubs/file-notification-attacks.pdf

Exploitation

Unlikely (under 1%). EPSS under 1%, or no score yet.

CISA KEV

Not listed

Public check

No public nuclei template

Weakness

Information Exposure · Information Disclosure

Vendor

Linux

Published

January 2026

Band

Unlikely (under 1%), January 2026

• NVD entrynvd.nist.gov
• Vendor advisorygit.kernel.org
• CVE recordcve.org