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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-68090 json

debugobjects: Plug race against a concurrent OOM disable

published 2026-08-10 2 mo ago modified 2026-08-17 2 mo ago also EUVD-2026-55271

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 7%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

debugobjects: Plug race against a concurrent OOM disable

syzbot reported a puzzling splat:

WARNING: kernel/time/hrtimer.c:443 at stub_timer+0xa/0x20

stub_timer() is installed as timer callback function in hrtimer_fixup_assert_init(), which is invoked when debug_object_assert_init() can't find a shadow object. In that case debug objects emits a warning about it before invoking the fixup.

Though the provided console log lacks this warning and instead has the following a few seconds before the splat:

ODEBUG: Out of memory. ODEBUG disabled

So the object was looked up in debug_object_assert_init() and the lookup failed due a concurrent out of memory situation which disabled debug objects and freed the shadow objects:

debug_object_assert_init() if (!debug_objects_enabled) return; obj = alloc(); if (!obj) { // Out of memory debug_objects_enabled = false; free_objects(); obj = lookup_or_alloc();

// The lookup failed because the other side // removed the objects, so this returns // an error code as the object in question // is not statically initialized

if (!IS_ERR_OR_NULL(obj)) return; if (!obj) { debug_oom(); return; }

print(...) if (!debug_objects_enabled) return;

fixup(...)

The debug object splat is skipped because debug_objects_enabled is false, but the fixup callback is invoked unconditionally, which makes the timer disfunctional.

This is only a problem in debug_object_assert_init() and debug_object_activate() as both have to handle statically initialized objects and therefore must handle the error pointer return case gracefully. All other places only handle the found/not found case and the NULL pointer return is a signal for OOM. Otherwise they get a valid shadow object.

Plug the hole by checking whether debug objects are still enabled before invoking the print and fixup function in those two places.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.261, 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.145, 6.12.96, 6.18.39, 7.1.4, 7.2
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.180-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.96-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.1.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-68090

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-198.208
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-147.147
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-31.31
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1117.124
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1067.70
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1012.12
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1118.128
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1071.79

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-68090

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-2026-68090 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: debugobjects: Plug race against a concurrent OOM disable

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

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

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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