Bug 2540328 (CVE-2026-93261)

Summary: CVE-2026-93261 kernel: locking/lockdep: Fix NULL pointer dereference in __lock_set_class()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's lock dependency validator (lockdep). When lock class registration fails, the kernel omits a check for an empty result before calculating internal index values, leading to memory corruption. A local user can exploit this vulnerability during lock reacquisition to cause an invalid memory dereference, resulting in a kernel crash and Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-24 16:21:09 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

locking/lockdep: Fix NULL pointer dereference in __lock_set_class()

register_lock_class() can return NULL when the lock class pool is
exhausted, graph_lock() fails, or key validation fails. However,
__lock_set_class() uses the return value directly in pointer arithmetic
without a NULL check:

  class = register_lock_class(lock, subclass, 0);
  hlock->class_idx = class - lock_classes;

If class is NULL, this computes a wild offset that corrupts
hlock->class_idx. The subsequent reacquire_held_locks() call will
invoke hlock_class() with this corrupted index, leading to a NULL or
out-of-bounds pointer dereference.

Add the missing NULL check, consistent with how __lock_acquire() already
handles this case at the same call site.
Comment 1 gkamathe 2026-09-28 11:02:05 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-93261.mbox