Bug 2460687 (CVE-2026-31481) - CVE-2026-31481 kernel: tracing: Drain deferred trigger frees if kthread creation fails
Summary: CVE-2026-31481 kernel: tracing: Drain deferred trigger frees if kthread creat...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-31481
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
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Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-04-22 15:05 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-04-22 18:41 UTC (History)
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-04-22 15:05:31 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tracing: Drain deferred trigger frees if kthread creation fails

Boot-time trigger registration can fail before the trigger-data cleanup
kthread exists. Deferring those frees until late init is fine, but the
post-boot fallback must still drain the deferred list if kthread
creation never succeeds.

Otherwise, boot-deferred nodes can accumulate on
trigger_data_free_list, later frees fall back to synchronously freeing
only the current object, and the older queued entries are leaked
forever.

To trigger this, add the following to the kernel command line:

  trace_event=sched_switch trace_trigger=sched_switch.traceon,sched_switch.traceon

The second traceon trigger will fail and be freed. This triggers a NULL
pointer dereference and crashes the kernel.

Keep the deferred boot-time behavior, but when kthread creation fails,
drain the whole queued list synchronously. Do the same in the late-init
drain path so queued entries are not stranded there either.


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