CVE-2026-23332: cpufreq: intel_pstate: Fix crash during turbo disable

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: 2026-03-25 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cpufreq: intel_pstate: Fix crash during turbo disable When the system is booted with kernel command line argument "nosmt" or "maxcpus" to limit the number of CPUs, disabling turbo via: echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo results in a crash: PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP PTI ... RIP: 0010:store_no_turbo+0x100/0x1f0 ... This occurs because for_each_possible_cpu() returns CPUs even if they are not online. For those CPUs, all_cpu_data[] will be NULL. Since commit 973207ae3d7c ("cpufreq: intel_pstate: Rearrange max frequency updates handling code"), all_cpu_data[] is dereferenced even for CPUs which are not online, causing the NULL pointer dereference. To fix that, pass CPU number to intel_pstate_update_max_freq() and use all_cpu_data[] for those CPUs for which there is a valid cpufreq policy.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.16.1 before 6.18.17; from 6.19 before 6.19.7; 6.16, 7.0-rc1, 7.0-rc2, 7.0-rc3, 7.0-rc4, 7.0-rc5 (+2) — fixed in 6.18.17, 6.19.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18.17, 6.19.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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