tracefs: Use generic inode RCU for synchronizing freeing

published 2024-09-04 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2024-41162

cvss: 7.8; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 12%
public exploits: 0; none known

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

With structure layout randomization enabled for 'struct inode' we need to avoid overlapping any of the RCU-used / initialized-only-once members, e.g. i_lru or i_sb_list to not corrupt related list traversals when making use of the rcu_head.

For an unlucky structure layout of 'struct inode' we may end up with the following splat when running the ftrace selftests:

[<...>] list_del corruption, ffff888103ee2cb0->next (tracefs_inode_cache+0x0/0x4e0 [slab object]) is NULL (prev is tracefs_inode_cache+0x78/0x4e0 [slab object]) [<...>] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [<...>] kernel BUG at lib/list_debug.c:54! [<...>] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN [<...>] CPU: 3 PID: 2550 Comm: mount Tainted: G N 6.8.12-grsec+ #122 ed2f536ca62f28b087b90e3cc906a8d25b3ddc65 [<...>] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.14.0-2 04/01/2014 [<...>] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff84656018>] __list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0x138/0x3e0 [<...>] Code: 48 b8 99 fb 65 f2 ff ff ff ff e9 03 5c d9 fc cc 48 b8 99 fb 65 f2 ff ff ff ff e9 33 5a d9 fc cc 48 b8 99 fb 65 f2 ff ff ff ff <0f> 0b 4c 89 e9 48 89 ea 48 89 ee 48 c7 c7 60 8f dd 89 31 c0 e8 2f [<...>] RSP: 0018:fffffe80416afaf0 EFLAGS: 00010283 [<...>] RAX: 0000000000000098 RBX: ffff888103ee2cb0 RCX: 0000000000000000 [<...>] RDX: ffffffff84655fe8 RSI: ffffffff89dd8b60 RDI: 0000000000000001 [<...>] RBP: ffff888103ee2cb0 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: fffffbd0082d5f25 [<...>] R10: fffffe80416af92f R11: 0000000000000001 R12: fdf99c16731d9b6d [<...>] R13: 0000000000000000 R14: ffff88819ad4b8b8 R15: 0000000000000000 [<...>] RBX: tracefs_inode_cache+0x0/0x4e0 [slab object] [<...>] RDX: __list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0x108/0x3e0 [<...>] RSI: __func__.47+0x4340/0x4400 [<...>] RBP: tracefs_inode_cache+0x0/0x4e0 [slab object] [<...>] RSP: process kstack fffffe80416afaf0+0x7af0/0x8000 [mount 2550 2550] [<...>] R09: kasan shadow of process kstack fffffe80416af928+0x7928/0x8000 [mount 2550 2550] [<...>] R10: process kstack fffffe80416af92f+0x792f/0x8000 [mount 2550 2550] [<...>] R14: tracefs_inode_cache+0x78/0x4e0 [slab object] [<...>] FS: 00006dcb380c1840(0000) GS:ffff8881e0600000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [<...>] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [<...>] CR2: 000076ab72b30e84 CR3: 000000000b088004 CR4: 0000000000360ef0 shadow CR4: 0000000000360ef0 [<...>] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [<...>] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [<...>] ASID: 0003 [<...>] Stack: [<...>] ffffffff818a2315 00000000f5c856ee ffffffff896f1840 ffff888103ee2cb0 [<...>] ffff88812b6b9750 0000000079d714b6 fffffbfff1e9280b ffffffff8f49405f [<...>] 0000000000000001 0000000000000000 ffff888104457280 ffffffff8248b392 [<...>] Call Trace: [<...>] <TASK> [<...>] [<ffffffff818a2315>] ? lock_release+0x175/0x380 fffffe80416afaf0 [<...>] [<ffffffff8248b392>] list_lru_del+0x152/0x740 fffffe80416afb48 [<...>] [<ffffffff8248ba93>] list_lru_del_obj+0x113/0x280 fffffe80416afb88 [<...>] [<ffffffff8940fd19>] ? _atomic_dec_and_lock+0x119/0x200 fffffe80416afb90 [<...>] [<ffffffff8295b244>] iput_final+0x1c4/0x9a0 fffffe80416afbb8 [<...>] [<ffffffff8293a52b>] dentry_unlink_inode+0x44b/0xaa0 fffffe80416afbf8 [<...>] [<ffffffff8293fefc>] __dentry_kill+0x23c/0xf00 fffffe80416afc40 [<...>] [<ffffffff8953a85f>] ? __this_cpu_preempt_check+0x1f/0xa0 fffffe80416afc48 [<...>] [<ffffffff82949ce5>] ? shrink_dentry_list+0x1c5/0x760 fffffe80416afc70 [<...>] [<ffffffff82949b71>] ? shrink_dentry_list+0x51/0x760 fffffe80416afc78 [<...>] [<ffffffff82949da8>] shrink_dentry_list+0x288/0x760 fffffe80416afc80 [<...>] [<ffffffff8294ae75>] shrink_dcache_sb+0x155/0x420 fffffe80416afcc8 [<...>] [<ffffffff8953a7c3>] ? debug_smp_processor_id+0x23/0xa0 fffffe80416afce0 [<...>] [<ffffffff8294ad20>] ? do_one_tre ---truncated---

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 distros 2 links 3

Linux Linux 6.6.46, 6.9, 6.10.5, 6.11

debian ubuntu

linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.10.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-44959

linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-50.51
linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1020.22
linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1019.21
linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1015.19
linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1017.17
linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1020.23
linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1002.4
linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1016.18

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-44959

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2024-44959 updated 2026-11-07 cvss 4.4

kernel: tracefs: Use generic inode RCU for synchronizing freeing

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 2 y ago (2024-09-10)

Exploit prediction

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2024-44959
NVD CVE-2024-44959

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary