CVE-2026-46173: exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2026-05-28 · updated 2026-10-19
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task When an already-exiting task oopses, make_task_dead() currently calls do_task_dead() with preemption enabled. That is forbidden: do_task_dead() calls __schedule(), which has a comment saying "WARNING: must be called with preemption disabled!". If an oopsing task is preempted in do_task_dead(), between becoming TASK_DEAD and entering the scheduler explicitly, bad things happen: finish_task_switch() assumes that once the scheduler has switched away from a TASK_DEAD task, the task can never run again and its stack is no longer needed; but that assumption apparently doesn't hold if the dead task was preempted (the SM_PREEMPT case). This means that the scheduler ends up repeatedly dropping references on the dead task's stack, which can lead to use-after-free or double-free of the entire task stack; in other words, two tasks can end up running on the same stack, resulting in various kinds of memory corruption. (This does not just affect "recursively oopsing" tasks; it is enough to oops once during task exit, for example in a file_operations::release handler)

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.17 before 6.1.175; from 6.2 before 6.6.140; from 6.7 before 6.12.88; from 6.13 before 6.18.30; from 6.19 before 7.0.7; 7.1-rc1, 7.1-rc2, 7.1-rc3 — fixed in 6.1.175, 6.12.88, 6.18.30, 6.6.140, 7.0.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.175, 6.12.88, 6.18.30, 6.6.140. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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