CVE-2026-72342
HighCVSS 8.4Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the mlx5e driver for Mellanox network cards, a race condition was found during HV VHCA stats agent registration. The asynchronous control path may run before work structure and agent pointer initialization, leading to NULL pointer dereference or kernel data structure corruption.
Risk Assessment
The vulnerability can cause kernel panic or memory corruption, potentially enabling local privilege escalation or destabilizing virtualized environments.
Recommendation
Apply the official Linux kernel patch addressing CVE-2026-72342 immediately and update to a kernel version where the issue is fixed.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-99259Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the soc/tegra: pmc driver has an uninitialised early_pmc->rate variable for legacy 32-bit Tegra devices. The variable is never configured and remains 0, triggering a warning in tegra_pmc_enter_suspend_mode(). The issue appeared after the PMC driver was changed to create the PMC context dynamically, updating rate only in the new context.
- CVE-2026-99258Unknown
In the Linux kernel, hv_apicid_to_vp_index() uses per-CPU hypercall input and output pages. In an SEV-SNP CoCo VM without a paravisor the output page is not allocated, so the hypervisor stores the resulting VP index into memory not allocated by the guest. The fix uses the input page for both input and output.
- CVE-2026-99257Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the shared GPIO mechanism based on platform lookup tables requires an associated struct device. An fwnode-based lookup with no associated device currently causes a NULL-pointer dereference. The fix adds a check that lets the kernel gracefully handle this situation with an error.
- CVE-2026-99256Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the dm cache module used a rw_semaphore for background_work_lock, although write locks on rw_semaphores have strict owner semantics. The locking process was not always the same as the unlocking one, triggering a warning with CONFIG_DEBUG_RWSEMS during suspend/resume of a cache device. The fix replaces the rw_semaphore with a spinlock and a wait queue.
- CVE-2026-99251Unknown
In the Linux kernel, init_vp_index() contains a retry loop that strips CPUs from a node if they are already in the allocated cpumask or outside the HK_TYPE_MANAGED_IRQ housekeeping cpumask. If the housekeeping cpumask contains no CPU in that node, the loop becomes infinite. The fix skips NUMA nodes with no housekeeping CPU and aborts early when no online housekeeping CPUs exist.
- CVE-2026-99250Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the NBCON console printing kthreads are started very early during boot via early_initcall(). Asynchronously enabling/disabling interrupts during early boot may interfere with early SMP setup on some hardware platforms, causing hangs. The fix postpones kthread startup until after all arch initcalls have completed.
- CVE-2026-99249Unknown
In the Linux kernel, zap_pid_ns_processes() waiting for PID namespace cleanup was not freezable. A tracer outside the namespace that does not reap its traced zombies keeps PIDs allocated, making the wait unbounded and causing every suspend attempt to fail. The fix makes the wait loops use TASK_FREEZABLE states so the freezer can freeze waiting tasks.
- CVE-2026-99248Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the i2c: xiic driver was changed to restore non-managed runtime PM instead of the devres-based approach to fix a clk WARN flood. The managed release tore down runtime PM in the wrong order, causing the clock to be disabled twice and triggering "clkN already disabled" warnings on every teardown.
- CVE-2026-99247Unknown
In the Linux kernel, if trace buffer allocation fails during early boot, tracing_disabled remains set and the global trace array events list stays uninitialized. tracer_init_tracefs_work_func() runs asynchronously without checking this state and calls event_trace_init() and init_tracer_tracefs(), leading to a NULL pointer dereference Oops during boot. The fix checks tracing_disabled at the start of the work function.
- CVE-2026-99215Unknown
In the Linux kernel power supply subsystem, a use-after-free vulnerability exists. If a power supply is unregistered while its external_power_changed() callback is still running, the driver may free data that the callback is still accessing, leading to a kernel crash (NULL pointer dereference).
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/mlx5e: Fix HV VHCA stats agent registration race mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_create() registers the stats agent through mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(). The helper publishes the agent in hv_vhca->agents[type] under agents_lock and immediately schedules an asynchronous control invalidation on the HV VHCA workqueue before returning to mlx5e. The asynchronous invalidation invokes the control agent's invalidate callback, which reads the hypervisor control block and forwards the command to mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_control(). That callback may either: - call cancel_delayed_work_sync(&priv->stats_agent.work), or - call queue_delayed_work(priv->wq, &sagent->work, sagent->delay). However, the delayed_work and priv->stats_agent.agent are only initialized after mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create() returns to mlx5e: agent = mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(...); /* publish + invalidate */ ... priv->stats_agent.agent = agent; /* too late */ INIT_DELAYED_WORK(&priv->stats_agent.work, ...); /* too late */ If the asynchronous control path runs before the two assignments above, it can: - Operate on an uninitialized delayed_work whose timer.function is NULL. queue_delayed_work() calls add_timer() unconditionally, so when the timer expires the timer softirq invokes a NULL function pointer. - Re-initialize the timer later through INIT_DELAYED_WORK() while the timer is already enqueued in the timer wheel, corrupting the hlist (entry.pprev cleared while the previous bucket node still points at this entry). - When the worker eventually runs, mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_work() reads sagent->agent (NULL) and dereferences it inside mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_write(). Fix this by: - Initializing priv->stats_agent.work before invoking mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(), so the work is always in a valid state when the control callback observes it. - Adding a struct mlx5_hv_vhca_agent **ctx_update out-parameter to mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(). The helper writes the agent pointer to *ctx_update before publishing into hv_vhca->agents[] and triggering the agents_update flow, so any callback subsequently invoked from that flow already sees a valid priv->stats_agent.agent. This avoids having the control callback participate in agent initialization. While at it, access priv->stats_agent.agent with READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE() for the cross-CPU access with the worker, and clear priv->stats_agent.buf on the agent_create() failure path.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS