published September 3, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ring-buffer: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop()
In test_ringbuffer()'s out_free cleanup loop, the check
`!rb_threads[cpu]` only catches NULL entries and misses entries that
hold an ERR_PTR.
rb_threads[] is static, so unassigned slots are NULL. But when
kthread_run_on_cpu() fails for a cpu, it stores ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) (or
-EINTR) in rb_threads[cpu] before the creation loop jumps to out_free.
That entry is non-NULL, so the old `!ptr` check does not break, and the
cleanup proceeds to call kthread_stop() on the ERR_PTR. kthread_stop()
then dereferences the bogus pointer, crashing the kernel during the
late_initcall self-test.
crash logs:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000001c
Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI
CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 7.2.0-rc6-dirty #7 PREEMPT(lazy)
RIP: 0010:kthread_stop+0x2e/0x220
RBX: fffffffffffffff4
CR2: 000000000000001c
Call Trace:
<TASK>
test_ringbuffer+0x1ec/0x650
do_one_initcall+0x6c/0x2c0
kernel_init_freeable+0x21d/0x420
kernel_init+0x15/0x1c0
ret_from_fork+0x21b/0x320
</TASK>
Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception