CVE-2026-99093 json
mm: don't schedule deferred kernel page table freeing while booting
published 16d ago modified 16d ago also EUVD-2026-109899
- 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 5%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm: don't schedule deferred kernel page table freeing while booting
Booting with a boot-time function tracer and a filter, for example
ftrace=function ftrace_filter=pud_free_pmd_page
panics on 7.3-rc4 as soon as the tracer starts:
[ 23.531178] Starting tracer 'function' [ 23.675800] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000038: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI [ 23.819917] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000001c0-0x00000000000001c7] [ 23.964025] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 7.3.0-rc4-fe2ec83746e5-with-fixes-v2+ #195 PREEMPT(undef) [ 24.252248] RIP: 0010:__queue_work+0xab/0xf00 [ 25.981629] Call Trace: [ 26.125727] <TASK> [ 26.413912] ? pagetable_free_kernel+0x20/0x120 [ 26.990283] queue_work_on+0x97/0xf0 [ 27.134382] __cpa_collapse_large_pages+0x501/0x6f0 [ 27.566662] cpa_flush+0x394/0x620 [ 27.998953] change_page_attr_set_clr+0x321/0x4a0 [ 29.151729] set_memory_rox+0xa2/0xf0 [ 29.584018] create_trampoline+0x431/0x6f0 ... [ 44.343347] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!
The boot-time tracer is started from early_trace_init(), which runs before workqueue_init_early(). Making its trampoline read-only splits a large page, and CPA collapses it again right away. The split table has been a kernel page table since commit 9e4a3ec3411b ("x86/mm/pat: Allocate split page tables as kernel page tables"), so the collapse frees it through pagetable_free_kernel(), which queues work on system_percpu_wq - still NULL at that point. That commit is correct in itself; it only lets CPA reach pagetable_free_kernel() before the workqueue that function relies on exists.
Keep putting the table on the list, but don't schedule the work while the system is still booting. A core_initcall schedules it once to free whatever was queued by then.
Patch / fix
- Linux Linux 6.18.57, 7.2.11
- linux Debian 14 7.2.11-1
debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-99093
- linux Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10
- linux-aws Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
- linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
- linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
- linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1
- linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
- linux-realtime Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1
ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-99093
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
Is CVE-2026-99093 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.
Check with FencerVendor advisories
What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.
red hat product security vex CVE-2026-99093 updated cvss 4.1
kernel: mm: don't schedule deferred kernel page table freeing while booting
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 moreaffected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
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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 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
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 5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).
Affected products
- Linux Linux
Classification
- Technology feeds
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-99093
- NVD CVE-2026-99093
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