Bug 2541241 (CVE-2026-97904)

Summary: CVE-2026-97904 kernel: cpufreq: initialize policy rwsem before sysfs publication
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
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's CPU frequency scaling (cpufreq) subsystem. A race condition occurs because an internal synchronization lock is initialized only after its system filesystem (sysfs) entries are made accessible. A local user accessing these sysfs attributes during policy allocation could interact with the uninitialized lock, leading to a kernel crash and a 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 2026-09-25 11:09:23 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

cpufreq: initialize policy rwsem before sysfs publication

cpufreq_policy_alloc() initializes policy->rwsem after
kobject_init_and_add() has created the policy sysfs directory and its
default attributes. A sysfs access can therefore reach a policy callback
before the semaphore has been initialized.

Initialize policy->rwsem before publishing the policy kobject so sysfs
callbacks always see an initialized semaphore.
Comment 1 Keith Grant 2026-09-29 17:06:00 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-97904.mbox