{"cve":"CVE-2026-97938","nvd":{"published":"2026-09-25T11:17:21.193","modified":"2026-10-21T13:21:16.970","status":"Received","description":"In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\nreboot: fix cad_pid use-after-free race\n\ncad_pid is a single kernel-wide struct pid pointer. proc_do_cad_pid()\nreads it and passes it to pid_vnr() without protecting the lifetime of\nthe referenced struct pid. A concurrent writer can replace cad_pid and\ndrop the final reference to the old struct pid after the reader has\nloaded the pointer but before pid_vnr() has finished dereferencing it,\ncausing a use-after-free.\n\nkill_cad_pid() has the same lifetime race when it passes cad_pid to\nkill_pid().\n\nAt the time this issue was reported, an unprivileged user could reach the\nsysctl through user and PID namespaces because cad_pid was registered in\npid_table[]. Moving cad_pid back to the global reboot sysctl table\ncorrected that namespace and permission mismatch, but did not fix the\nunderlying lifetime race.\n\nFix this by treating cad_pid as an RCU-protected pointer at both read\nsites and by waiting for a grace period before dropping the old reference\non the write side.\n\ncall_rcu(&old_pid->rcu, ...) cannot be used here because free_pid()\nalso queues pid->rcu; queueing the same rcu_head twice can corrupt the\nRCU callback list.\n\nOriginal KASAN crash stack:\n  kernel/pid.c:545 pid_nr_ns()        # reads freed pid->level\n  kernel/pid.c:556 pid_vnr()          # calls pid_nr_ns()\n  kernel/pid.c:775 proc_do_cad_pid()  # calls pid_vnr(cad_pid)","cvss_v4":null,"cvss_v3":null,"cwes":[],"references":["https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0c1a966bc047af2801a70b8eb13f9df5d7ab925f","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5a88f78df753993469dab4d1831f8fb4256a9468","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9a17b0e053197a6a42cdc75e75a35b17aa662088","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ad72e2566643fff7f01666d845fb026898155e1f","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ae3e53fe3c1241855e3a88f74877738349948c78"],"products":[],"source":"nvd","synced_at":"2026-10-22T16:41:11.231219466+00:00"},"epss":{"cve":"CVE-2026-97938","score":0.00206,"percentile":0.10569,"date":"2026-10-25"},"kev":null,"osv":[],"attribution":["This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.","EPSS scores: FIRST Exploit Prediction Scoring System, https://www.first.org/epss","Known exploited vulnerabilities: CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog","Package advisories: OSV (https://osv.dev), from the GitHub Advisory Database, PyPA, Go, RustSec and other ecosystem databases, under CC-BY 4.0 or CC0","CVE records: the CVE Program's CVE List (https://www.cve.org), under its terms of use (https://www.cve.org/Legal/TermsOfUse). CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation; this product is not affiliated with the CVE Program."]}