In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfs: Fix missing xas_retry() calls in xarray iteration netfslib has a number of places in which it performs iteration of an xarray whilst being under the RCU read lock. It *should* call xas_retry() as the first thing inside of the loop and do "continue" if it returns true in case the xarray walker passed out a special value indicating that the walk needs to be redone from the root[*]. Fix this by adding the missing retry checks. [*] I wonder if this should be done inside xas_find(), xas_next_node() and suchlike, but I'm told that's not an simple change to effect. This can cause an oops like that below. Note the faulting address - this is an internal value (|0x2) returned from xarray. BUG: kernel NULL pointer