locking/rt: Fix the incorrect RCU protection in rt_spin_unlock()
Collected exploitation and prediction evidence
Risk source coverageCISA KEV is observed exploitation evidence. FIRST EPSS is a dated prediction of exploitation in the next 30 days. Missing scores are unknown. This collector requests predictions only for explicit CVE aliases in the public NuGet archive; Microsoft release views retain their existing prediction scope.
No collected risk observation for these identifiers. This does not establish absence of exploitation or a zero probability.
cve-program · CVE-2026-72069
PublishedIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: locking/rt: Fix the incorrect RCU protection in rt_spin_unlock() rt_spin_unlock() releases the RCU protection before unlocking the lock. That opens the door for the following UAF scenario: T1 T2 spin_lock(&p->lock); rcu_read_lock(); invalidate(p); p = rcu_dereference(ptr); rcu_assign_pointer(ptr, NULL); if (!p) return; spin_unlock(&p->lock); spin_lock(&p->lock) lock(&lock->lock); rcu_read_lock(); kfree_rcu(p); rcu_read_unlock(); .... spin_unlock(&p->lock) rcu_read_unlock(); // Ends grace period rcu_do_batch() kfree(p); UAF -> rt_mutex_cmpxchg_release(&lock->lock...) Regular spinlocks keep preemption disabled accross the unlock operation, which provides full RCU protection, but the RT substitution fails to resemble that. Same applies for the rwlock substitution. Move the rcu_read_unlock() invocation past the unlock operations to match the non-RT semantics. This makes it asymmetric vs. rt_xxx_lock(), but that's harmless as the caller needs to hold RCU read lock across the lock operation. The migrate_enable() call stays before the unlock operation because there is no per CPU operation in the unlock path which would require migration to be kept disabled.
- Source published
- 15 Aug 2026 05:52:21 UTC
- Source modified
- 19 Oct 2026 21:19:26 UTC
- Observed here
- 23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC
- Source terms
- CVE Program Terms of Use
Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON
This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: cve-program · CVE Program Terms of Use. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.
CVSS 3.1 · 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H