CVE-2026-99065

cgroup/cpuset: Handle cpu hotplug race in guarantee_active_cpus()

N/A
Published: October 23, 2026 at 12:23 PM UTC
Updated: October 23, 2026 at 01:17 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
N/A
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cgroup/cpuset: Handle cpu hotplug race in guarantee_active_cpus() With commit 2125c0034c5d ("cgroup/cpuset: Make cpuset hotplug processing synchronous"), the cpuset hotplug operation becomes synchronous. That commit also removes the code that handles race between cpuset_hotplug_work and cpu hotplug notifier with the assumption that race is now gone. Later commit 7a0aabd9ce69 ("cgroup/cpuset: Always use cpu_active_mask") updates the cpuset code to always use cpu_active_mask instead of cpu_online_mask in some places including guarantee_online_cpus() which is renamed to guarantee_active_cpus() in that commit. In the case of CPU offline operation, cpu_active_mask is updated first in sched_cpu_deactivate() to remove the offline CPU before cpuset_handle_hotplug() is called to update the effective_cpus of the affected cpusets. The cpu_online_mask is updated after that near the end of the offline operation to remove the offline CPU. As a result, the race comes back and the top cpuset may not have any active CPU leading to NULL pointer dereference during the race window when guarantee_active_cpus() is called after cpu_active_mask is updated to remove the CPU to be torn down but before cpuset_handle_hotplug() is able to properly update the effective_cpus of the top cpuset. Fix this by adding back the NULL cs check to avoid this problem.

Affected

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

6.167a0aabd9ce697fc581ec691b21f748050fbcf004
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.57 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.2.11 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.3 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

Quick Info

StatusRECEIVED

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