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no cvss —

CVE-2026-98789 json

bpf: Fix objects stuck in free_by_rcu_ttrace

published 24d ago modified 24d ago also EUVD-2026-103874

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Fix objects stuck in free_by_rcu_ttrace

do_call_rcu_ttrace() returns early when call_rcu_ttrace_in_progress is set and leaves the objects in free_by_rcu_ttrace. __free_rcu() frees waiting_for_gp_ttrace only and clears the flag. Hence the objects that free_bulk() or __free_by_rcu() added while RCU tasks trace GP was in flight stay in free_by_rcu_ttrace until free_bulk() or alloc_bulk() is called for the same bpf_mem_cache again, which may never happen. The number of such objects is not bounded.

Turn call_rcu_ttrace_in_progress into three states: 0 - idle 1 - __free_rcu() is queued 2 - __free_rcu() is queued and free_by_rcu_ttrace got more objects since

do_call_rcu_ttrace() sets 2. __free_rcu() does cmpxchg(1 -> 0) and starts the next GP when it fails. It cannot clear the flag first and check free_by_rcu_ttrace later, since bpf_mem_alloc_destroy() frees bpf_mem_cache without waiting for RCU callbacks when the flag is zero.

Now __free_rcu() queues itself, so the one that didn't see 'draining' may do call_rcu_tasks_trace() after rcu_barrier_tasks_trace() in free_mem_alloc(). Queue it under rcu_read_lock() and do synchronize_rcu() before the barriers. Calling rcu_barrier_tasks_trace() twice works too, but creating and destroying hash maps in a loop on many cpus slows down to one free_mem_alloc() per GP and kworkers pile up.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 7.3
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98789

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-43.43
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.18
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.19
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.11
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1018.18
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1020.21
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-aws-7.0 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.18~24.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98789

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-98789 updated cvss 4.4

kernel: bpf: Fix objects stuck in free_by_rcu_ttrace

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-selftests-internal Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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