CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-43323

MediumCVSS 5.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.12%

2th percentile - higher than 2% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel affects zero_vruntime tracking in the fair scheduler. Due to a previous fix (b3d99f43c72b), when two tasks perform yield, the virtual runtime counter can overflow within a single tick, leading to system instability. The fix forces an update at the end of every slice to prevent this.

Risk Assessment

May cause system instability or unpredictable behavior, especially under heavy yield usage (e.g., stress-ng-yield) and in environments with multiple cgroups. In extreme cases, it can lead to incorrect task scheduling.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix. If updating is not possible, avoid workloads that generate frequent yields or consult your vendor for a workaround.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

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().

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS