CVE-2026-99065
Received
Received - Intake
Race Condition in Linux Kernel cpuset Subsystem
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-99065, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-23
Last updated on: 2026-10-23
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
cgroup/cpuset: Handle cpu hotplug race in guarantee_active_cpus()
With commit 2125c0034c5d ("cgroup/cpuset: Make cpuset hotplug processing
synchronous"), the cpuset hotplug operation becomes synchronous. That
commit also removes the code that handles race between cpuset_hotplug_work
and cpu hotplug notifier with the assumption that race is now gone.
Later commit 7a0aabd9ce69 ("cgroup/cpuset: Always use cpu_active_mask")
updates the cpuset code to always use cpu_active_mask instead of
cpu_online_mask in some places including guarantee_online_cpus() which
is renamed to guarantee_active_cpus() in that commit.
In the case of CPU offline operation, cpu_active_mask is updated
first in sched_cpu_deactivate() to remove the offline CPU before
cpuset_handle_hotplug() is called to update the effective_cpus of the
affected cpusets. The cpu_online_mask is updated after that near the end
of the offline operation to remove the offline CPU. As a result, the race
comes back and the top cpuset may not have any active CPU leading to NULL
pointer dereference during the race window when guarantee_active_cpus()
is called after cpu_active_mask is updated to remove the CPU to be torn
down but before cpuset_handle_hotplug() is able to properly update the
effective_cpus of the top cpuset.
Fix this by adding back the NULL cs check to avoid this problem.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
