cve.bz

CVE-2026-46173

7.8 highEPSS 0.1%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task When an already-exiting task oopses, make_task_dead() currently calls do_task_dead() with preemption enabled. That is forbidden: do_task_dead() calls __schedule(), which has a comment saying "WARNING: must be called with preemption disabled!". If an oopsing task is preempted in do_task_dead(), between becoming TASK_DEAD and entering the scheduler explicitly, bad things happen: finish_task_switch() assumes that once the scheduler has switched away from a TASK_DEAD task, the task can never run again and its stack is no longer needed; but that assumption apparently doesn't hold if the dead task was preempted (the SM_PREEMPT case). This means that the scheduler ends up repeatedly dropping references on the dead task's stack, which can lead to use-after-free or double-free of the entire task stack; in other words, two tasks can end up running on the same stack, resulting in various kinds of memory corruption. (This does not just affect "recursively oopsing" tasks; it is enough to oops once during task exit, for example in a file_operations::release handler)

CVSS 3.1
7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 2% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-25)
CWEs
CWE-787, CWE-416
Published
Modified
Record from
the NVD, synced

Affected

References

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