CVE-2026-23138: tracing: Add recursion protection in kernel stack trace recording

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-02-14 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Add recursion protection in kernel stack trace recording A bug was reported about an infinite recursion caused by tracing the rcu events with the kernel stack trace trigger enabled. The stack trace code called back into RCU which then called the stack trace again. Expand the ftrace recursion protection to add a set of bits to protect events from recursion. Each bit represents the context that the event is in (normal, softirq, interrupt and NMI). Have the stack trace code use the interrupt context to protect against recursion. Note, the bug showed an issue in both the RCU code as well as the tracing stacktrace code. This only handles the tracing stack trace side of the bug. The RCU fix will be handled separately.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.8 before 6.18.6; 6.19-rc1, 6.19-rc2, 6.19-rc3, 6.19-rc4 — fixed in 6.18.6
Linux: 5.8 — fixed in 6.19

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18.6; Linux 6.19. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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