# CVE-2025-68788

## Summary

- **CVE ID:** CVE-2025-68788
- **Severity:** UNKNOWN
- **CVSS Score:** 1.01
- **CWE:** N/A
- **Published:** Jan 13, 2026
- **Last Modified:** Sep 17, 2026

## Description

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

## Affected Products

- Linux — Linux (72acc854427948efed7a83da27f7dc3239ac9afc)
- Linux — Linux (2.6.36)
- Linux — Linux (0)
- Linux — Linux (5.10.248)
- Linux — Linux (5.15.198)
- Linux — Linux (6.1.160)
- Linux — Linux (6.6.120)
- Linux — Linux (6.12.64)
- Linux — Linux (6.18.3)
- Linux — Linux (6.19)

## References

- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/df2711544b050aba703e6da418c53c7dc5d443ca)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/859bdf438f01d9aa7f84b09c1202d548c7cad9e8)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6a7d7d96eeeab7af2bd01afbb3d9878a11a13d91)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0643d46759db8b84c0504a676043e5e341b6c81)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82f7416bcbd951549e758d15fc1a96a5afc2e900)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7a93edb23bcf07a3aaf8b598edfc2faa8fbcc0b6)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/635bc4def026a24e071436f4f356ea08c0eed6ff)
- [siemens-SADP](https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-019113.html)

## Exploitation Prediction (EPSS)

- **EPSS Score:** 0.21%
- **EPSS Percentile:** 11.1

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_Exported from OnDuty AI Vulnerability Intelligence on 2026-09-17._