High · published September 16, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
drm/nouveau: unsubscribe the channel-kill event before the fence context
nouveau_channel_del() tears the fence context down first and only drops
the channel-kill subscription later, in the middle of the nvif object
teardown:
if (chan->fence)
nouveau_fence(chan->cli->drm)->context_del(chan);
...
nvif_object_dtor(&chan->vram);
nvif_event_dtor(&chan->kill);
The subscribed handler is nouveau_channel_killed(), which calls
nouveau_channel_kill() and from there nouveau_fence_context_kill() on
chan->fence. A kill event delivered in that window takes fctx->lock and
walks fctx->pending on a fence context that context_del() has already
freed.
Nothing reaches this below Fermi today, because the subscription is
gated on FERMI_CHANNEL_GPFIFO and nothing kills a channel there. On
Fermi and newer the window is real but narrow, since a kill has to land
exactly while the channel is being destroyed. That is reason enough on
its own, which is why this carries a Fixes: tag. The last patch in this
series subscribes Tesla channels as well; nothing kills those today, so
it does not widen the exposure now, but it is the groundwork for a
recovery path that would, and the ordering is better fixed before that
lands than alongside it.
Drop the subscription before anything it depends on is torn down.