CVE-2026-45968

cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available

published May 27, 2026

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
2.4
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available

On certain platforms (PowerNV systems without a power-mgt DT node),

cpuidle may register only a single idle state. In cases where that

single state is a polling state (state 0), the ladder governor may

incorrectly treat state 1 as the first usable state and pass an

out-of-bounds index. This can lead to a NULL enter callback being

invoked, ultimately resulting in a system crash.

[ 13.342636] cpuidle-powernv : Only Snooze is available

[ 13.351854] Faulting instruction address: 0x00000000

[ 13.376489] NIP [0000000000000000] 0x0

[ 13.378351] LR [c000000001e01974] cpuidle_enter_state+0x2c4/0x668

Fix this by adding a bail-out in cpuidle_select() that returns state 0

directly when state_count <= 1, bypassing the governor and keeping the

tick running.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00130 · 2.4th percentile
Published
2026-05-27T12:18Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 27 MAY 12:18Z
    cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available
    cvelistv5