CVE-2026-46173

HIGH

exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task When an already-exiting task oopses, make_task_dead() currently calls do_task_dead() with preemption enabled. That is forbidden: do_task_dead() calls __schedule(), which has a comment saying "WARNING: must be called with preemption disabled!". If an oopsing task is preempted in do_task_dead(), between becoming TASK_DEAD and entering the scheduler explicitly, bad things happen: finish_task_switch() assumes that once the scheduler has switched away from a TASK_DEAD task, the task can never run again and its stack is no longer needed; but that assumption apparently doesn't hold if the dead task was preempted (the SM_PREEMPT case). This means that the scheduler ends up repeatedly dropping references on the dead task's stack, which can lead to use-after-free or double-free of the entire task stack; in other words, two tasks can end up running on the same stack, resulting in various kinds of memory corruption. (This does not just affect "recursively oopsing" tasks; it is enough to oops once during task exit, for example in a file_operations::release handler)

Scores

CVSS v3 7.8
EPSS 0.0014
EPSS Percentile 3.2%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-787
Status published
Products (17)
Linux/Linux < 5.17
Linux/Linux 5.17
Linux/Linux 6.1.175 - 6.1.*
Linux/Linux 6.12.88 - 6.12.*
Linux/Linux 6.18.30 - 6.18.*
Linux/Linux 6.6.140 - 6.6.*
Linux/Linux 7.0.7 - 7.0.*
Linux/Linux 7.1
Linux/Linux 7.1-rc4
Linux/Linux 7f80a2fd7db9a55894fd841915236aca611291b5 - 3d6fb8a7690c23e3213c4b008f64d89a44b98737
... and 7 more
Published May 28, 2026
Tracked Since May 28, 2026