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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-72016 json

cpu/hotplug: Fix NULL kobject warning in cpuhp_smt_enable()

published 2026-08-15 2 mo ago modified 2026-08-17 2 mo ago also EUVD-2026-59115

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 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

cpu/hotplug: Fix NULL kobject warning in cpuhp_smt_enable()

On arm64, when booting with `maxcpus` greater than the number of present CPUs (e.g., QEMU -smp cpus=4,maxcpus=8), some CPUs are marked as 'present' but have not yet been registered via register_cpu(). Consequently, the per-cpu device objects for these CPUs are not yet initialized.

In cpuhp_smt_enable(), the code iterates over all present CPUs. Calling _cpu_up() for these unregistered CPUs eventually leads to sysfs_create_group() being called with a NULL kobject (or a kobject without a directory), triggering the following warning in fs/sysfs/group.c:

WARNING: fs/sysfs/group.c:137 at internal_create_group+0x41c/0x4bc, CPU#2: sh/181 [...] Call trace: internal_create_group+0x41c/0x4bc (P) sysfs_create_group+0x18/0x24 topology_add_dev+0x1c/0x28 cpuhp_invoke_callback+0x104/0x20c __cpuhp_invoke_callback_range+0x94/0x11c _cpu_up+0x200/0x37c

When booting with ACPI, arm64 smp_prepare_cpus() currently sets all enumerated CPUs as "present" regardless of their status in the MADT. This causes issues with SMT hotplug control. For instance, with QEMU's "-smp 4,maxcpus=8" configuration, the MADT GICC entries are populated as follows:

1. The first four CPUs: `Enabled` set but `Online Capable` not set.

2. The remaining four CPUs: `Online Capable` set but `Enabled` not set to support potential hot-plugging.

Fix this by:

1. When booting with ACPI, checking the ACPI_MADT_ENABLED flag in the GICC entry before calling set_cpu_present() during SMP initialization.

2. Properly managing the present mask in acpi_map_cpu() and acpi_unmap_cpu() to support actual CPU hotplug events, This aligns with other architectures like x86 and LoongArch.

3. Update the arm64 CPU hotplug documentation to no longer state that all online-capable vCPUs are marked as present by the kernel at boot time.

This ensures that only physically available or explicitly enabled CPUs are in the present mask, keeping the SMT control logic consistent with the actual hardware state.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.40, 7.1.5, 7.2
  • linux Debian 14 7.1.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72016

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-38.38
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1014.14
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1014.14
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.9
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.15
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-38.38.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1013.13

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72016

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-2026-72016 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: cpu/hotplug: Fix NULL kobject warning in cpuhp_smt_enable()

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    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

Exploit prediction

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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