CVE-2026-98256
Received
Received - Intake
Race Condition in Linux Kernel Signal Handling
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98256, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-06
Last updated on: 2026-10-06
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
signal: Prevent exec() race
Hyunwoo debugged the following KASAN UAF splat:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in __send_signal_locked+0xb27/0xba0
Write of size 8 at addr ffff888007ed80c8 by task poc/79
...
Call Trace:
__send_signal_locked+0xb27/0xba0
do_send_sig_info+0xa7/0x160
do_send_specific+0x76/0xa0
__x64_sys_tgkill+0x193/0x270
...
Allocated by task 80:
do_timer_create+0x1a4/0x1030
__x64_sys_timer_create+0x145/0x190
...
Freed by task 12:
kmem_cache_free_bulk+0x1f8/0x4a0
kvfree_rcu_bulk+0x14f/0x1c0
kfree_rcu_work+0x128/0x1a0
...
Last potentially related work creation:
kvfree_call_rcu+0x39/0x390
__flush_itimer_signals+0x211/0x320
flush_itimer_signals+0x47/0x90
begin_new_exec+0xa6b/0x28c0
It turned out that this happens with a non-leader exec() as Hyunwoo
explained:
de_thread() calls exchange_tids() before release_task(leader), so the
struct pid held by a SIGEV_THREAD_ID timer created against the leader's tid
now points to the thread which called execve(). pid_task() returns that
thread and lock_task_sighand() on it succeeds.
If the timer signal is blocked, its sigqueue stays queued on the leader's
task::pending. The next expiry of that timer can then run while
release_task() flushes the queue.
posixtimer_send_sigqueue() checks whether the sigqueue is already queued
with a plain list_empty(), which only reads list_head::next.
list_del_init() is not atomic and INIT_LIST_HEAD() stores list_head::next
before list_head::prev, so the check can pass in between. list_add_tail()
queues the entry on the task::pending of the live thread, and the
list_head::prev store from the flush then overwrites the list_head::prev
link that list_add_tail() has just set.
__flush_itimer_signals() does not undo that either. With list_head::prev
pointing at the entry itself, its list_del_init() only stores the same
values again, so the entry is not removed from the list. It is still there
after the last reference is dropped and the timer is freed by RCU, and the
list_add_tail() of a later tgkill() follows that list_head::prev into the
freed timer.
This problem surfaced with the recent commit which moved the sigqueue flush
out of the sighand lock held region.
Hyonwoo proposed to fix this by using list_del_init_careful(), but that
just papers over the problem. After some disucssions and various attempts
to solve it, Eric pointed out that there is no reason to flush
task::pending late in release_task() and it should be done in
exit_signals() already.
As nothing can collect and deliver signals which are queued in a dying
task's pending queue, there is no reason to delay it further.
But it has to be ensured that no signals can be queued into it after that
point. exit_signals() sets PF_EXITING in task::flags, which can be used as
an indicator for this.
Cure it by:
- Preventing signal queueing for task private signals (PIDTYPE_PID) when
the task has PF_EXITING set in __send_signal_locked() and in
posixtimer_send_sigqueue().
- Protecting the unlocked setting of PF_EXITING in exit_signals() for the
task group empty and the group exit case with sighand lock
- Flushing task::pending signals right there.
Optimize that by moving the whole pending list to an on-stack list head
under sighand lock and free the signals without the lock held.
There has been quite some discussion about the lockless flush and the
non-leader exec case on weakly ordered systems. The problem is that a third
party which tries to send a posix timer signal relies on the PID lookup to
find the target task and that lookup might result in the new leader when
the signal was originaly directed to the old leader. In case that the
signal was queued on the old leader then the lockless flush raised a
concern over the following situation:
old_leader new_leader third party
A: flush_list() // list_del_in
---truncated---
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | fb3bbcfe344e64a46574a638b051ffd78762c12d |
| Linux | Linux | fb3bbcfe344e64a46574a638b051ffd78762c12d |
| Linux | Linux | fb3bbcfe344e64a46574a638b051ffd78762c12d |
| Linux | Linux | 6.15 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
