CVE-2026-93253
Low risk· EPSS 8%Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk8th percentile - higher than 8% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's CPU isolation (housekeeping) mechanism was found, where memblock-allocated memory for the CPU mask was freed too early during boot, before the memory map was fully initialized. This caused a warning and potential system malfunction when using the 'nohz_full' boot parameter. The fix defers freeing this memory until initcall processing.
Risk Assessment
The risk involves improper system behavior during boot with the nohz_full parameter, potentially leading to kernel warnings, memory errors, or system instability. Organizations using CPU isolation may experience performance issues or crashes.
Recommendation
It is recommended to update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix (commit deferring memblock memory freeing to initcall). Also monitor kernel logs for memblock-related warnings during boot.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-99259Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the soc/tegra: pmc driver has an uninitialised early_pmc->rate variable for legacy 32-bit Tegra devices. The variable is never configured and remains 0, triggering a warning in tegra_pmc_enter_suspend_mode(). The issue appeared after the PMC driver was changed to create the PMC context dynamically, updating rate only in the new context.
- CVE-2026-99258Unknown
In the Linux kernel, hv_apicid_to_vp_index() uses per-CPU hypercall input and output pages. In an SEV-SNP CoCo VM without a paravisor the output page is not allocated, so the hypervisor stores the resulting VP index into memory not allocated by the guest. The fix uses the input page for both input and output.
- CVE-2026-99257Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the shared GPIO mechanism based on platform lookup tables requires an associated struct device. An fwnode-based lookup with no associated device currently causes a NULL-pointer dereference. The fix adds a check that lets the kernel gracefully handle this situation with an error.
- CVE-2026-99256Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the dm cache module used a rw_semaphore for background_work_lock, although write locks on rw_semaphores have strict owner semantics. The locking process was not always the same as the unlocking one, triggering a warning with CONFIG_DEBUG_RWSEMS during suspend/resume of a cache device. The fix replaces the rw_semaphore with a spinlock and a wait queue.
- CVE-2026-99251Unknown
In the Linux kernel, init_vp_index() contains a retry loop that strips CPUs from a node if they are already in the allocated cpumask or outside the HK_TYPE_MANAGED_IRQ housekeeping cpumask. If the housekeeping cpumask contains no CPU in that node, the loop becomes infinite. The fix skips NUMA nodes with no housekeeping CPU and aborts early when no online housekeeping CPUs exist.
- CVE-2026-99250Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the NBCON console printing kthreads are started very early during boot via early_initcall(). Asynchronously enabling/disabling interrupts during early boot may interfere with early SMP setup on some hardware platforms, causing hangs. The fix postpones kthread startup until after all arch initcalls have completed.
- CVE-2026-99249Unknown
In the Linux kernel, zap_pid_ns_processes() waiting for PID namespace cleanup was not freezable. A tracer outside the namespace that does not reap its traced zombies keeps PIDs allocated, making the wait unbounded and causing every suspend attempt to fail. The fix makes the wait loops use TASK_FREEZABLE states so the freezer can freeze waiting tasks.
- CVE-2026-99248Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the i2c: xiic driver was changed to restore non-managed runtime PM instead of the devres-based approach to fix a clk WARN flood. The managed release tore down runtime PM in the wrong order, causing the clock to be disabled twice and triggering "clkN already disabled" warnings on every teardown.
- CVE-2026-99247Unknown
In the Linux kernel, if trace buffer allocation fails during early boot, tracing_disabled remains set and the global trace array events list stays uninitialized. tracer_init_tracefs_work_func() runs asynchronously without checking this state and calls event_trace_init() and init_tracer_tracefs(), leading to a NULL pointer dereference Oops during boot. The fix checks tracing_disabled at the start of the work function.
- CVE-2026-99215Unknown
In the Linux kernel power supply subsystem, a use-after-free vulnerability exists. If a power supply is unregistered while its external_power_changed() callback is still running, the driver may free data that the callback is still accessing, leading to a kernel crash (NULL pointer dereference).
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched/isolation: Defer freeing of cpumask memblock memory to initcall When testing a linux-next kernel with commit 59bd1d914bb5 ("memblock: warn when freeing reserved memory before memory map is initialized"), the following warning was hit when there was a "nohz_full" kernel boot parameter. Cannot free reserved memory because of deferred initialization of the memory map WARNING: mm/memblock.c:904 at __free_reserved_area+0xde/0xf0, CPU#0: swapper/0/0 : Call Trace: <TASK> memblock_phys_free+0xcb/0x100 housekeeping_init+0x14c/0x170 start_kernel+0x207/0x450 x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x30 x86_64_start_kernel+0xda/0xe0 common_startup_64+0x13e/0x141 </TASK> IOW, we shouldn't free memblock allocated memory so early in the boot process when memory map isn't fully initialized in deferred_init_memmap(). Fix it by saving the housekeeping cpumask memblock memory to be freed into a llist free list in housekeeping_init() and add a new housekeeping_late_init() helper to defer the actual freeing of memblock memory to when initcall's are being processed. The cpumask memblock memory is treated as a llist_node with the size of a "long" type which is also smallest cpumask size that can be allocated. The non-atomic version of the llist APIs are used as there is no contention. This commit depends on the presence of commit 7c2eee9c1367 ("memblock: don't touch memblock arrays when memblock_free() is called late") to prevent a KASAN UAF bug report [1]. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

