CVE-2026-72491

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/9p: fix race condition on rdma->state in trans_rdma.c

The rdma->state field is modified without holding req_lock in both recv_done() and p9_cm_event_handler(), while rdma_request() accesses the same field under the req_lock spinlock. This inconsistent locking creates a race condition:

• recv_done() running in softirq completion context sets rdma->state = P9_RDMA_FLUSHING without acquiring req_lock

• p9_cm_event_handler() modifies rdma->state at multiple points (ADDR_RESOLVED, ROUTE_RESOLVED, ESTABLISHED, CLOSED) without req_lock

• rdma_request() uses spin_lock_irqsave(&rdma->req_lock, flags) to protect the read-modify-write of rdma->state

The race can cause lost state transitions: recv_done() or the CM event handler could set state to FLUSHING/CLOSED while rdma_request() is concurrently checking or modifying state under the lock, leading to the FLUSHING transition being silently overwritten by CLOSING. This corrupts the connection state machine and can cause use-after-free on RDMA request objects during teardown.

Fix by adding req_lock protection to all rdma->state modifications in recv_done() and p9_cm_event_handler(), matching the pattern already used in rdma_request(). Use spin_lock_irqsave/spin_unlock_irqrestore in the CM event handler since it can race with recv_done() which runs in softirq context.

Tested with a kernel module that races two threads (simulating rdma_request and recv_done/CM handler) on rdma->state with proper locking: 5.5M+ FLUSHING writes over 27M iterations with 0 lost transitions.

Affected product:

Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.4.0 (+2 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.