CVE-2026-53370: perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-07-19 · updated 2026-07-29

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks Currently there are several issues on the user space ACR mask validation and configuration. - The validation for user space ACR mask (attr.config2) is incomplete, e.g., the ACR mask could include the index which belongs to another ACR events group, but it's not validated. - An early return on an invalid ACR mask caused all subsequent ACR groups to be skipped. - The stale hardware ACR mask (hw.config1) is not cleared before setting new hardware ACR mask. The following changes address all of the above issues. - Figure out the event index group of an ACR group. Any bits in the user-space mask not present in the index group are now dropped. - Instead of an early return on invalid bits, drop only the invalid portions and continue iterating through all ACR events to ensure full configuration. - Explicitly clear the stale hardware ACR mask for each event prior to writing the new configuration. Besides, a non-leader event member of ACR group could be disabled in theory. This could cause bit-shifting errors in the acr_mask of remaining group members. But since ACR sampling requires all events to be active, this should not be a big concern in real use case. Add a "FIXME" comment to notice this risk.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.16 before 6.18.30; from 6.19 before 7.0.7; 7.1-rc1, 7.1-rc2 — fixed in 6.18.30, 7.0.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18.30, 7.0.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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