Bug 2536668 (CVE-2026-93182)

Summary: CVE-2026-93182 kernel: sched/fair: Fix overflow in update_tg_cfs_runnable()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel. A local user can trigger a divide-by-zero error in the scheduler's fair scheduling class (`sched/fair`) due to an unsigned 32-bit integer (u32) overflow in the `update_tg_cfs_runnable()` function. This overflow corrupts internal scheduling data, leading to an invalid division operation and ultimately causing a system crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-17 19:04:03 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/fair: Fix overflow in update_tg_cfs_runnable()

A divide-by-zero crash is observed when running hackbench:

   [14697.488452] CPU: 112 UID: 0 PID: 124791 Comm: hackbench Not tainted 7.1.0-rc2+
   [14697.492627] RIP: 0010:propagate_entity_load_avg+0x35f/0x3e0
   [14697.506799]  <TASK>
   [14697.507411]  __dequeue_task+0x2b4/0xc70
   [14697.508677]  dequeue_task_fair+0x36/0x370
   [14697.509047]  dequeue_task+0x101/0x2f0
   [14697.509426]  __schedule+0x1b1/0x1a00
   [14697.510868]  anon_pipe_read+0x3da/0x450
   [14697.511400]  vfs_read+0x361/0x390
   [14697.512053]  __x64_sys_read+0x19/0x30

The divide-by-zero happens here:

  if (scale_load_down(gcfs_rq->load.weight)) {
           load_sum = div_u64(gcfs_rq->avg.load_sum,
                              scale_load_down(gcfs_rq->load.weight));
  }

gcfs_rq->load.weight is an insane large value and is truncated
to the lower 32 bits by div_u64, which happen to be 0.

Using AI for investigation, the cause is a u32 overflow in
update_tg_cfs_runnable(), and flat pickup became a victim when using
tg_tasks():

   u32 new_sum, divider;
   ...
   new_sum = se->avg.runnable_avg * divider; <-- boom

The following sequence shows how this triggers the crash:

   propagate_entity_load_avg()
     update_tg_cfs_runnable()     # u32 overflow corrupts runnable_sum

   __update_load_avg_cfs_rq()
     ___update_load_avg()         # computes insane runnable_avg
   update_tg_load_avg()           # propagates to tg->runnable_avg

   update_cfs_group()
     calc_concur_shares()
       tg_tasks()                 # long-to-int truncation, negative nr
     reweight_entity()            # corrupted se->load.weight
       update_load_add()          # corrupted cfs_rq->load.weight

   propagate_entity_load_avg()
     update_tg_cfs_load()
       div_u64()                  # divide-by-zero

Fix by widening new_sum from u32 to u64 (no need to force tg_tasks()
to return unsigned long after this fix)