CVE-2026-99141
Received
Received - Intake
NULL Pointer Dereference in Linux Kernel Tracing
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-99141, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-28
Last updated on: 2026-10-28
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
tracing: Fix crash in print_graph_function_event()
tracing_set_tracer() assigns the flags of the newly selected tracer
with:
tr->current_trace_flags = t->flags ? : t->tracer->flags;
If the new tracer defines neither static flags nor default flags, like
hwlat, irqsoff or wakeup, add_tracer() has no per instance flags copy
for it, and both operands are NULL, so tr->current_trace_flags ends up
being NULL as well.
The ring buffer is not cleared when switching tracers: it is reset
inside tracer_init(), after current_trace_flags was already assigned.
If the buffer still holds function_graph entries of the previous
tracer, printing one of them dereferences the NULL pointer. This was
hit by cat trace during an ftrace stress test:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000
#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
RIP: 0010:print_graph_function_event+0xe/0x20
Call Trace:
s_show+0x4d/0x110
seq_read_iter+0x2d4/0x490
seq_read+0x130/0x170
vfs_read+0xb5/0x370
ksys_read+0x6d/0xe0
do_syscall_64+0xbc/0x450
The snapshot buffer is not reset at all, so this can be reproduced
without a race:
echo function_graph > /sys/kernel/tracing/current_tracer
echo 1 > /sys/kernel/tracing/snapshot
echo hwlat > /sys/kernel/tracing/current_tracer
cat /sys/kernel/tracing/snapshot
Rather than teaching every user of tr->current_trace_flags about this
corner case, make sure it is never NULL: when the newly selected
tracer has no flags at all, tracing_set_tracer() falls back to a
static empty no_tracer_flags. run_tracer_selftest() can hit the same
case, so the same fallback is added there too. The existing users
already handle opts == NULL, so these tracers keep behaving as before.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
