High · published August 10, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
tracing: Fix use-after-free freeing trigger private data
Commit 61d445af0a7c ("tracing: Add bulk garbage collection of freeing
event_trigger_data") moved the kfree() of event_trigger_data to a kthread
that runs tracepoint_synchronize_unregister() before freeing. That removed
the synchronization the trigger .free callbacks used to get implicitly and
inline from trigger_data_free().
event_hist_trigger_free(), event_hist_trigger_named_free() and
event_enable_trigger_free() free their satellite data (hist_data, cmd_ops,
enable_data) right after trigger_data_free() returns. With the
synchronization now deferred to the kthread, a concurrent tracepoint
handler can still reach that data through the list_del_rcu()'d trigger,
causing a use-after-free.
The histogram teardown must stay synchronous: remove_hist_vars() and
unregister_field_var_hists() have to detach a synthetic event from the
histogram before the trigger-removal write returns, otherwise a following
command races in and the synthetic-event removal fails with -EBUSY, as the
trigger-synthetic-eprobe.tc selftest catches. Make those callbacks wait
with the correct barrier - tracepoint_synchronize_unregister(), matching
the free kthread - before freeing.
The enable trigger has no such synchronous requirement, and a blocking
synchronize there would re-serialize the path that commit deliberately
deferred. Give it an optional private_data_free() callback that the free
kthread runs after its grace period, and free enable_data from there.