CVE-2026-99203

About vulnerability

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

pipe: preserve existing fasync readers on writer setup failure

F_SETFL and FIOASYNC decide whether to invoke ->fasync() before pipe_fasync() takes pipe->mutex. Two enables of one O_RDWR FIFO can therefore both enter the callback.

fasync_helper() allocates before checking for an existing entry. If the first enable installs both entries, a second enable can update the reader entry and then fail the allocation for the writer entry. The error path removes the pre-existing reader entry, clearing FASYNC while the writer entry remains registered. __fput() then skips ->fasync(), so a later pipe notification can dereference the freed file or its f_owner. An unprivileged memory-pressure reproducer triggers a KASAN slab-use-after-free in send_sigio() through this path.

Keep the reader helper’s result and undo the registration only if this call added it. The pipe mutex serializes changes to both lists, so a failed new registration still removes its reader, while a failed duplicate preserves the existing registrations and FASYNC. Successful duplicate enables continue to update fa_fd as before.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.10.259 (+19 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.