CVE-2026-74601

About vulnerability

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

ring-buffer: Use current_context for safe per-CPU buffer swap

The ring_buffer_swap_cpu() function currently checks the per-CPU committing counter to determine if a buffer is actively being written to before performing the swap. However, there exists a race window where this check can be bypassed:

ring_buffer_lock_reserve cpu_buffer = buffer->buffers[cpu]; // cpu_buffer_a rb_reserve_next_event rb_start_commit // inc committing if (unlikely(READ_ONCE(cpu_buffer->buffer) != buffer)) {…} __rb_reserve_next rb_move_tail rb_end_commit(cpu_buffer); // dec committing => 0 /* interrupt hits here, successfully swaps! */ local_inc(&cpu_buffer->committing);

ring_buffer_unlock_commit cpu_buffer = buffer->buffers[cpu]; // cpu_buffer_b rb_commit rb_end_commit RB_WARN_ON(cpu_buffer, !local_read(&cpu_buffer->committing)) // triggers warning

The committing counter can temporarily drop to 0 during a single write operation (within rb_move_tail), creating a window where swap can succeed even though the write is still in progress. This leads to inconsistent buffer state and triggers the RB_WARN_ON in rb_commit().

Replace the committing counter check with current_context checks, which are set at the entry of ring_buffer_lock_reserve() and remain valid throughout the entire write operation, providing a reliable indicator of buffer busy state during swap.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 5.14.0 (+9 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.