CVE-2026-80671: perf sched: Fix register_pid() overflow, strcpy, and BUG_ON

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.3 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: 2026-08-28 · updated 2026-09-14

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: perf sched: Fix register_pid() overflow, strcpy, and BUG_ON register_pid() has several issues when processing untrusted perf.data: 1. Integer overflow: (pid + 1) * sizeof(struct task_desc *) can wrap to a small value on 32-bit systems when pid is large (e.g. 0x40000000), causing realloc to return a tiny buffer followed by out-of-bounds writes in the initialization loop. 2. Heap buffer overflow: strcpy(task->comm, comm) copies the untrusted comm string into a fixed 20-byte COMM_LEN buffer with no length check. 3. BUG_ON on allocation failure: perf.data is untrusted input, so allocation failures should be handled gracefully rather than killing the process. 4. Realloc of sched->tasks assigned directly back, leaking the old pointer on failure; nr_tasks incremented before the realloc, leaving corrupted state on failure. Cap pid at PID_MAX_LIMIT (4194304, matching the kernel's maximum on 64-bit), replace strcpy with strlcpy, guard against NULL comm, replace BUG_ON with NULL returns using safe realloc patterns, and add NULL checks in callers that dereference the result.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 2.6.32 — fixed in 7.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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