Bug 2451209 (CVE-2026-23332)

Summary: CVE-2026-23332 kernel: cpufreq: intel_pstate: Fix crash during turbo disable
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's intel_pstate cpufreq driver. A local user can trigger a system crash, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS), by attempting to disable the CPU turbo feature through the sysfs interface. This vulnerability occurs on systems booted with specific kernel arguments like "nosmt" or "maxcpus", due to a NULL pointer dereference when processing offline CPUs.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-03-25 11:04:46 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

cpufreq: intel_pstate: Fix crash during turbo disable

When the system is booted with kernel command line argument "nosmt" or
"maxcpus" to limit the number of CPUs, disabling turbo via:

 echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo

results in a crash:

 PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
 PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
 PGD 0 P4D 0
 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP PTI
 ...
 RIP: 0010:store_no_turbo+0x100/0x1f0
 ...

This occurs because for_each_possible_cpu() returns CPUs even if they
are not online. For those CPUs, all_cpu_data[] will be NULL. Since
commit 973207ae3d7c ("cpufreq: intel_pstate: Rearrange max frequency
updates handling code"), all_cpu_data[] is dereferenced even for CPUs
which are not online, causing the NULL pointer dereference.

To fix that, pass CPU number to intel_pstate_update_max_freq() and use
all_cpu_data[] for those CPUs for which there is a valid cpufreq policy.