Microsoft Security Response Center guidance
Vendor revision: Oct 20, 2026Release Notes
Vulnerability intelligence
CVE-2026-98789. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.
Release Notes
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Fix objects stuck in free_by_rcu_ttrace
do_call_rcu_ttrace() returns early when call_rcu_ttrace_in_progress is set and leaves the objects in free_by_rcu_ttrace. __free_rcu() frees waiting_for_gp_ttrace only and clears the flag. Hence the objects that free_bulk() or __free_by_rcu() added while RCU tasks trace GP was in flight stay in free_by_rcu_ttrace until free_bulk() or alloc_bulk() is called for the same bpf_mem_cache again, which may never happen.
The number of such objects is not bounded.
Turn call_rcu_ttrace_in_progress into three states: 0 - idle 1 - __free_rcu() is queued 2 - __free_rcu() is queued and free_by_rcu_ttrace got more objects since
do_call_rcu_ttrace() sets 2. __free_rcu() does cmpxchg(1 -> 0) and starts the next GP when it fails. It cannot clear the flag first and check free_by_rcu_ttrace later, since bpf_mem_alloc_destroy() frees bpf_mem_cache without waiting for RCU callbacks when the flag is zero.
Now __free_rcu() queues itself, so the one that didn't see 'draining' may do call_rcu_tasks_trace() after rcu_barrier_tasks_trace() in free_mem_alloc(). Queue it under rcu_read_lock() and do synchronize_rcu() before the barriers.
Calling rcu_barrier_tasks_trace() twice works too, but creating and destroying hash maps in a loop on many cpus slows down to one free_mem_alloc() per GP and kworkers pile up.
Source: NVD