diff --git a/fs/attr.c b/fs/attr.c
index d60dc1edb526..87af68bb8ad2 100644
--- a/fs/attr.c
+++ b/fs/attr.c
@@ -394,9 +394,25 @@ int notify_change(struct mnt_idmap *idmap, struct dentry *dentry,
 		return error;
 
 	if ((ia_valid & ATTR_MODE)) {
-		umode_t amode = attr->ia_mode;
+		/*
+		 * Don't allow changing the mode of symlinks:
+		 *
+		 * (1) The vfs doesn't take the mode of symlinks into account
+		 *     during permission checking.
+		 * (2) This has never worked correctly. Most major filesystems
+		 *     did return EOPNOTSUPP due to interactions with POSIX ACLs
+		 *     but did still updated the mode of the symlink.
+		 *     This inconsistency led system call wrapper providers such
+		 *     as libc to block changing the mode of symlinks with
+		 *     EOPNOTSUPP already.
+		 * (3) To even do this in the first place one would have to use
+		 *     specific file descriptors and quite some effort.
+		 */
+		if (S_ISLNK(inode->i_mode))
+			return -EOPNOTSUPP;
+
 		/* Flag setting protected by i_mutex */
-		if (is_sxid(amode))
+		if (is_sxid(attr->ia_mode))
 			inode->i_flags &= ~S_NOSEC;
 	}