CVE-2026-74576
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Elevated risk51th percentile - higher than 51% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel leads to unbounded recursion in the memory free path of the slab allocator. Cycles between obj_exts arrays of different kmalloc caches can cause stack overflow and system crash.
Risk Assessment
An attacker or even normal system operations can trigger kernel stack overflow, leading to kernel panic or potential privilege escalation. This vulnerability can destabilize critical production systems.
Recommendation
Apply the official Linux kernel patch immediately, which introduces a new kmalloc type (KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT) and SLAB_ALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT flag to prevent cycle formation. Monitor vendor security advisories and test the update in a staging environment before production deployment.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-43603Medium
A NULL pointer dereference in the Linux GPU driver could potentially lead to a kernel crash. This may result in a denial of service on the affected system.
- CVE-2026-99270Unknown
A use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's reqsk_timer_handler() function. When TCP socket migration fails at inet_ehash_insert(), the code jumps to the no_ownership label and immediately frees the new reqsk via __reqsk_free() without stopping its timer, potentially leading to a UAF.
- CVE-2026-99269Unknown
In the Linux kernel sched_ext scheduler, a task can be found on a non-local DSQ while the CPU that dispatched it is still running ops.dequeue() and hasn't cleared SCX_OPSS_DISPATCHING. The DSQ consume and move paths don't wait for dispatch to finish and can operate on the task concurrently with the dispatcher. The fix adds scx_wait_dispatching() before operating on the task.
- CVE-2026-99268Unknown
In io_uring with IORING_SETUP_DEFER_TASKRUN, completions are queued as local work and only become CQEs when the submitter enters the kernel to wait for events. io_uring_poll() reports EPOLLIN if local work is pending, but only if the work exists at call time; after DEFER_TASKRUN was added, the ->poll_wq wakeup was replaced by directly waking the submitter, so poll() can sleep despite pending work. The fix wakes ->poll_wq when the first entry is put on the work list, using an RCU callback when needed.
- CVE-2026-99267Unknown
In io_uring NAPI with dynamic tracking, a NAPI id not seen for a minute should be dropped from the ring's busy-poll list. However, the timeout is computed incorrectly — SEC_CONVERSION is used instead of the number of jiffies per second, giving about eight years for HZ=1000 and overflowing on 32-bit systems. As a result, entries are never removed and every wait polls all historical ids.
- CVE-2026-99266Unknown
In io_uring zcrx, io_zcrx_queue_cqe() computes the buffer offset in its area from net_iov_idx(), which is an unsigned int, so the shift is done in 32 bits and only the result is widened to the u64 placed in the CQE. An area can be up to 1 TB, so for every niov beyond the first 4 GB the CQE points the application at a buffer 4 GB (or a multiple) below the correct one. The application reads wrong data and returns a buffer it doesn't own via the refill queue while the real one is never given back.
- CVE-2026-99265Unknown
In io_uring/openclose, io_pipe_fixed() installs both ends of the pipe in the fixed file table, drops ->uring_lock, and copies the slot numbers to the application. If that faults, it takes the lock again and removes whatever is in these slots. If the request is run by io-wq, the lock really is dropped and the slots are visible to others; by the time the error path gets to them, they may have been closed and reused (by IORING_OP_CLOSE, direct open/accept, or IORING_REGISTER_FILES_UPDATE), causing removal of a file unrelated to the failed request. The fix performs the copy with the lock held.
- CVE-2026-99264Unknown
A bug was fixed in the Linux kernel's io_uring/net handling of recv retries on uncommitted buffers. When a receive was retried after a partial transfer, the kernel could hand out buffer memory that the retried request was still writing to, causing data overwrites. The request is now completed with the bytes received instead of retried, and MSG_WAITALL is no longer honoured for incremental buffers or multi-buffer bundles.
- CVE-2026-99263Unknown
In io_uring/poll, if a wakeup sets IO_POLL_RETRY_FLAG between the owning task consuming the existing instance of IO_POLL_RETRY_FLAG and the loop check in io_poll_check_events(), request processing stalls until an unrelated wakeup arrives. The fix uses atomic_cmpxchg instead of atomic_sub_return to guarantee both the count v and poll_refs are 0 and no wakeups are missed.
- CVE-2026-99262Unknown
In io_uring/timeout, an IORING_OP_TIMEOUT run by io-wq due to IOSQE_ASYNC has the same problem as poll, futex, and waitid. io_wq_submit_work() checks IO_WQ_WORK_CANCEL only once before issuing the request; a cancel in between flags the work, gets -EALREADY, and searches ->timeout_list in vain while the worker adds the request and starts the timer. Nobody checks the flag again and the timeout runs its course, and at ring exit a task can get stuck for the full duration. The fix checks the flag under ->timeout_lock and fails the request if set.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/slab: prevent unbounded recursion in free path with new kmalloc type Commit 280ea9c3154b ("mm/slab: avoid allocating slabobj_ext array from its own slab") avoided recursive allocation of obj_exts from kmalloc caches of the same size, by bumping the obj_exts array's allocation size whenever the array size equals the size of the object being allocated. However, as reported by Danielle Costantino and Shakeel Butt, even slabs from kmalloc caches of different sizes can form a cycle by allocating obj_exts arrays from each other [1]: What happened: a KMALLOC_NORMAL slab's obj_exts array (used by allocation profiling / memcg accounting) is itself kmalloc()'d from a KMALLOC_NORMAL cache, so the "slab holds another slab's obj_exts array" relation can form cycles. With sizeof(struct slabobj_ext) == 16 and the host's geometry: - kmalloc-512 has 64 objects/slab -> array is 64*16 == 1024 bytes, served from kmalloc-1k; - kmalloc-1k has 32 objects/slab -> array is 32*16 == 512 bytes, served from kmalloc-512. A kmalloc-512 slab and a kmalloc-1k slab therefore hold each other's obj_exts array. Discarding one frees the other's array, which empties and discards that slab, which frees the first's array, and so on: __free_slab() -> free_slab_obj_exts() -> kfree() -> discard_slab() -> __free_slab() recurses along the cycle until the stack is exhausted. With memory allocation profiling, this allows unbounded recursion in the free path and led to a stack overflow on a production host in the Meta fleet [1]: BUG: TASK stack guard page was hit Oops: stack guard page RIP: 0010:kfree+0x8/0x5d0 Call Trace: __free_slab+0x66/0xc0 kfree+0x3f0/0x5d0 ... ( ~125x __free_slab <-> kfree ) ... <kernel driver freeing a resource> do_syscall_64 It is proposed [1] to resolve this issue by always serving the obj_exts array allocation from kmalloc caches (or large kmalloc) of sizes larger than the object size. However, as pointed out by Vlastimil Babka [2], this can waste an excessive amount of memory as slabs from large kmalloc sizes (e.g. kmalloc-8k) generally need obj_exts arrays much smaller than the object size. Therefore, rather than bumping the size, let us take a different approach; disallow formation of cycles between kmalloc types when allocating obj_exts arrays. Currently, all obj_exts arrays are served from normal kmalloc caches. Cycles cannot be created if obj_exts arrays of normal kmalloc caches are served from a special kmalloc type that can never have obj_exts arrays. To achieve this, create a new kmalloc type called KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT. KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT caches are created with SLAB_NO_OBJ_EXT flag when either 1) memory allocation profiling is not permanently disabled, or 2) kmalloc types with a priority higher than KMALLOC_CGROUP are aliased with KMALLOC_NORMAL. Sheaf bootstrapping for KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT caches now must be deferred because allocation of a barn can trigger obj_exts array allocation of normal kmalloc caches when the KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT cache for that size is not ready yet. For simplicity, perform bootstrapping of sheaves for all kmalloc caches later. Introduce a new slab alloc flag, SLAB_ALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT, to prevent allocation of obj_exts arrays, and let kmalloc_slab() override the type to KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT when specified. Note that kmalloc_type() remains unchanged because kmalloc_flags() bypasses the kmalloc fastpath. Do not pass SLAB_ALLOC_NO_RECURSE to kmalloc_flags() in alloc_slab_obj_exts() and instead use SLAB_ALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT only when the objects are allocated from normal kmalloc caches. While this prevents unbounded recursive allocation of obj_exts, it allows KMALLOC_NO_OBJ_EXT caches to have sheaves. Since sheaf allocations specify SLAB_ALLOC_NO_RECURSE that prevents allocation of both sheaves and obj_exts arrays, the recursion depth is bounded. obj_exts arrays for non- ---truncated---
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

