Bug 2468082 (CVE-2026-43323) - CVE-2026-43323 kernel: sched/fair: Fix zero_vruntime tracking fix
Summary: CVE-2026-43323 kernel: sched/fair: Fix zero_vruntime tracking fix
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-43323
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-05-08 14:03 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-05-15 17:31 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Embargoed:


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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-05-08 14:03:35 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/fair: Fix zero_vruntime tracking fix

John reported that stress-ng-yield could make his machine unhappy and
managed to bisect it to commit b3d99f43c72b ("sched/fair: Fix
zero_vruntime tracking").

The combination of yield and that commit was specific enough to
hypothesize the following scenario:

Suppose we have 2 runnable tasks, both doing yield. Then one will be
eligible and one will not be, because the average position must be in
between these two entities.

Therefore, the runnable task will be eligible, and be promoted a full
slice (all the tasks do is yield after all). This causes it to jump over
the other task and now the other task is eligible and current is no
longer. So we schedule.

Since we are runnable, there is no {de,en}queue. All we have is the
__{en,de}queue_entity() from {put_prev,set_next}_task(). But per the
fingered commit, those two no longer move zero_vruntime.

All that moves zero_vruntime are tick and full {de,en}queue.

This means, that if the two tasks playing leapfrog can reach the
critical speed to reach the overflow point inside one tick's worth of
time, we're up a creek.

Additionally, when multiple cgroups are involved, there is no guarantee
the tick will in fact hit every cgroup in a timely manner. Statistically
speaking it will, but that same statistics does not rule out the
possibility of one cgroup not getting a tick for a significant amount of
time -- however unlikely.

Therefore, just like with the yield() case, force an update at the end
of every slice. This ensures the update is never more than a single
slice behind and the whole thing is within 2 lag bounds as per the
comment on entity_key().


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