CVE-2026-90002
7.8 HIGHPublished 2026-09-16 · Updated 2026-09-16
AI risk analysis
- Summary
- This vulnerability allows a race condition where the ftrace_ops could be freed while the trace_array is accessed, leading to a use-after-free condition and potential kernel crash.
- Exploitability
- Exploitation requires concurrent access to the trace instance files and rmdir operation, making it moderately difficult.
- Blast radius
- If exploited, this could lead to a kernel crash, potentially allowing an attacker to crash the system or gain further access.
- Detection
- No reliable host or network indicator is derivable from the published description.
- Prioritized remediation
- Upgrade to the fixed version 5.19.10 or later.
Analysis generated locally by qwen2.5:7b-instruct (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.
NVD description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ftrace: Take trace_array reference before accessing its ftrace_ops The trace instance files set_ftrace_filter and set_ftrace_notrace was updated to work with specific trace instances (trace_arrays). The issue is that when these files are opened, there is a small race window where it will use the ftrace_ops from the inode->private pointer to get a reference to the trace_array and then take its reference. The problem is that the ftrace_ops itself could be freed. If the rmdir on the instance happens at the same time the set_ftrace_filter file is opened, the rmdir could have also freed the ftrace_ops and referencing it will cause a use-after-free bug and crash the kernel. Instead, pass in the trace_array as the file private data (NULL for the top level instance), and then pass both the trace_array and the ftrace_ops to the ftrace_regex_open() function. If the trace_array is NULL, then it just uses the ftrace_ops without the need to take its reference (like normal). If the ftrace_ops is NULL, that is only the case for the top level instance and the global_ops can be used. This allows the trace_array to have its reference incremented before touching the ftrace_ops that could also be freed when the instance is.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
Data: NVD (public domain). Analysis: local $0 model. Defensive use only.