Executive brief
A locking issue was identified in the Linux kernel's performance monitoring subsystem (perf). This flaw could allow a local user to cause a system crash or instability by triggering an invalid locking state during specific event scheduling tasks. While it does not directly expose data, it impacts the reliability and availability of the affected system.
Technical details
A locking bug (CWE-667) was discovered in the Linux kernel's perf/core subsystem within the ctx_sched_in() function. The vulnerability occurs when a pinned event fails and attempts to wake up threads in the ring buffer while holding the perf-context lock, leading to an invalid wait context. Specifically, the code was incorrectly attempting to grab a wait-queue lock under a perf-context lock. This issue has been resolved by deferring the wakeup process using irq_work. The vulnerability is reachable by local users and can result in a kernel panic or system hang. Patches have been released for various stable kernel branches including 6.18.17 and 6.19.7.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.15 to 6.18.17, 6.19 to 6.19.7, 7.0-rc1
Timeline
- 2025-06-02: other: Initial patch authored
- 2026-03-25: disclosed: CVE published
- 2026-03-25: advisory