CVE-2026-46063

x86/shstk: Prevent deadlock during shstk sigreturn

MEDIUM
5.5
CVSS Score
Published: May 27, 2026 at 12:57 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 10:53 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
MEDIUM5.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.1%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/shstk: Prevent deadlock during shstk sigreturn During sigreturn the shadow stack signal frame is popped. The kernel does this by reading the shadow stack using normal read accesses. When it can't assume the memory is shadow stack, it takes extra steps to makes sure it is reading actual shadow stack memory and not other normal readable memory. It does this by holding the mmap read lock while doing the access and checking the flags of the VMA. Unfortunately that is not safe. If the read of the shadow stack sigframe hits a page fault, the fault handler will try to recursively grab another mmap read lock. This normally works ok, but if a writer on another CPU is also waiting, the second read lock could fail and cause a deadlock. Fix this by not holding mmap lock during the read access to userspace. Instead use mmap_lock_speculate_...() to watch for changes between dropping mmap lock and the userspace access. Retry if anything grabbed an mmap write lock in between and could have changed the VMA. These mmap_lock_speculate_...() helpers use mm::mm_lock_seq, which is only available when PER_VMA_LOCK is configured. So make X86_USER_SHADOW_STACK depend on it. On x86, PER_VMA_LOCK is a default configuration for SMP kernels. So drop support for the other configs under the assumption that the !SMP shadow stack user base does not exist. Currently there is a check that skips the lookup work when the SSP can be assumed to be on a shadow stack. While reorganizing the function, remove the optimization to make the tricky code flows more common, such that issues like this cannot escape detection for so long.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

6.13 ≤ v < 6.18.276.19 ≤ v < 7.0.46.6 ≤ v < 6.12.886.6 ≤ v < 6.18.276.6 ≤ v < 6.6.1406.6 ≤ v < 7.0.46.6 ≤ v < 7.16.7 ≤ v < 6.12.886.67fad2a432cd35bbf104d2d9d426e74902f22aa95
Vendor states this is fixed in 3d29db827502067626062f5c74dd502d14ab15bc (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 4f3374c990fb2adec06d20fd6d780927811c9aa0 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 9874b2917b9fbc30956fee209d3c4aa47201c64e (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d042d69b417515959e49021fef008c9b04a99bd5 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in e2c2b044458cbf22da05264fa707308e8d4f86f9 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.12.88 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.27 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6.140 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.0.4 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.1 (unaffected)

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-667

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