CVE-2026-45919
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel that leads to an infinite self-interrupt loop on CPU0 when overloaded. The issue occurs during RT task load balancing, potentially causing CPU lockup.
Risk Assessment
Organizations may experience severe performance and stability issues, leading to server crashes and application downtime.
Recommendation
It is recommended to update the Linux kernel to a version that includes a fix to eliminate redundant self-interrupts and prevent CPU lockup.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched/rt: Skip currently executing CPU in rto_next_cpu() CPU0 becomes overloaded when hosting a CPU-bound RT task, a non-CPU-bound RT task, and a CFS task stuck in kernel space. When other CPUs switch from RT to non-RT tasks, RT load balancing (LB) is triggered; with HAVE_RT_PUSH_IPI enabled, they send IPIs to CPU0 to drive the execution of rto_push_irq_work_func. During push_rt_task on CPU0, if next_task->prio < rq->donor->prio, resched_curr() sets NEED_RESCHED and after the push operation completes, CPU0 calls rto_next_cpu(). Since only CPU0 is overloaded in this scenario, rto_next_cpu() should ideally return -1 (no further IPI needed). However, multiple CPUs invoking tell_cpu_to_push() during LB increments rd->rto_loop_next. Even when rd->rto_cpu is set to -1, the mismatch between rd->rto_loop and rd->rto_loop_next forces rto_next_cpu() to restart its search from -1. With CPU0 remaining overloaded (satisfying rt_nr_migratory && rt_nr_total > 1), it gets reselected, causing CPU0 to queue irq_work to itself and send self-IPIs repeatedly. As long as CPU0 stays overloaded and other CPUs run pull_rt_tasks(), it falls into an infinite self-IPI loop, which triggers a CPU hardlockup due to continuous self-interrupts. The trigging scenario is as follows: cpu0 cpu1 cpu2 pull_rt_task tell_cpu_to_push <------------irq_work_queue_on rto_push_irq_work_func push_rt_task resched_curr(rq) pull_rt_task rto_next_cpu tell_cpu_to_push <-------------------------- atomic_inc(rto_loop_next) rd->rto_loop != next rto_next_cpu irq_work_queue_on rto_push_irq_work_func Fix redundant self-IPI by filtering the initiating CPU in rto_next_cpu(). This solution has been verified to effectively eliminate spurious self-IPIs and prevent CPU hardlockup scenarios.

