Bug 2541107 (CVE-2026-97920)

Summary: CVE-2026-97920 kernel: tracing: Keep the entry count when the histogram stats allocation fails
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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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel. A local user could trigger this vulnerability by reading an event tracing histogram file when a memory allocation failure occurs. Because an error code overwrites the entry counter during cleanup, the system treats the error as an extremely large positive number and attempts to free memory past the allocated boundary. This out-of-bounds memory access can cause memory corruption and crash the system, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-25 10:49:01 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tracing: Keep the entry count when the histogram stats allocation fails

print_entries() uses n_entries both as the number of sort entries and as
its own return value, so the -ENOMEM it stores when the stats allocation
fails overwrites the count that the cleanup still needs:

	n_entries = tracing_map_sort_entries(map, ...);
	if (n_entries < 0)
		return n_entries;
	...
			if (!stats) {
				n_entries = -ENOMEM;
				goto out;
			}
	...
 out:
	tracing_map_destroy_sort_entries(sort_entries, n_entries);

tracing_map_destroy_sort_entries() takes an unsigned int and loops up to
it, so -ENOMEM arrives as 4294967284. It walks an array of at most
map->max_elts pointers and calls destroy_sort_entry(), which dereferences
and frees, on whatever lies past the end.

Reading the hist file of a trigger with a .percent value, with that
allocation forced to fail:

  BUG: KASAN: vmalloc-out-of-bounds in tracing_map_destroy_sort_entries+0xa0/0xb0
  Read of size 8 at addr ffffc90000045000 by task init/1
   tracing_map_destroy_sort_entries+0xa0/0xb0
   hist_show+0x6f7/0x1df0
   seq_read_iter+0x2b8/0x1190
   vfs_read+0x176/0xa40
  The buggy address belongs to a 4-page vmalloc region starting at
  ffffc90000041000 allocated at tracing_map_sort_entries+0x5c/0xd50

A few pages further the fault is fatal. The registers at the oops confirm
the bound: the loop's end pointer less the array start, over the pointer
size, is 4294967284.

Return the error in a separate variable and leave n_entries holding the
count, the way tracing_map_sort_entries() does on its own error path.

The stats block is only entered for a value carrying .percent or .graph,
which __create_val_field() has rejected since v6.3, so this cannot be
reached in mainline as it stands. It becomes reachable again with
"tracing: hist: let values keep the percent and graph modifiers", so it
should be applied first.