CVE-2026-99254
Received
Received - Intake
Memory Leak in Linux Kernel io_uring
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-99254, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-11-03
Last updated on: 2026-11-03
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
io_uring: don't flood a cancelling task with task_work
io_ring_exit_work() asks each task which has used the ring to remove its
tctx node, by task_work, and repeats that until the list is empty.
io_tctx_exit_cb() doesn't touch the node while the task is in
io_uring_cancel_generic(), which removes all the nodes at its end. So the
work item queues the callback again as soon as it has completed, for
nothing.
That is more than a waste of time. task_work_run() only returns when it
finds the list empty. If the rings are released from inside the
cancellation, because requests of other rings held the last references to
their files, up to 64 work items keep sending callbacks to the one task
which is running them. It never finds the list empty, never gets back to
the cancellation, the nodes stay, and so it goes on: a task with 60 pairs
of rings which poll each other ran 280000 callbacks in 5 seconds, 20
seconds after exit_group(). It ends when all the senders happen to be late
at the same time. Until then the task keeps a CPU and the work items busy.
An exiting task can't be killed meanwhile. execve() cancels the requests in
the same way, so a live task can get stuck there as well, for minutes. If
it takes more than five, the work items run into the
WARN_ON_ONCE(time_after(jiffies, timeout)) of io_ring_exit_work(). No
privilege is needed for any of this.
If the callback has met a task in cancellation, wait a little before it is
sent again. Nobody has to wake the work item up for that: either the node
is gone by then, or it is the turn of the next round.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | d56d938b4bef3e1421a42023cdcd6e13c1f50831 |
| Linux | Linux | d56d938b4bef3e1421a42023cdcd6e13c1f50831 |
| Linux | Linux | d56d938b4bef3e1421a42023cdcd6e13c1f50831 |
| Linux | Linux | d56d938b4bef3e1421a42023cdcd6e13c1f50831 |
| Linux | Linux | d56d938b4bef3e1421a42023cdcd6e13c1f50831 |
| Linux | Linux | 5.12 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
