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CVE-2026-93208 json

kasan: fix cache shrink race with CPU hotplug

published 2026-09-24 45 d ago modified 2026-10-30 10 d ago also EUVD-2026-85937

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 6%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

kasan: fix cache shrink race with CPU hotplug

kasan_quarantine_remove_cache() first invokes per_cpu_remove_cache() on all online CPUs. Each callback moves objects belonging to the cache from cpu_quarantine to the CPU's shrink_qlist, where they can later be freed from task context.

kmem_cache_destroy() invokes the quarantine removal path while holding cpus_read_lock(), but kmem_cache_shrink() does not. The latter can therefore race with CPU offlining as follows:

kmem_cache_shrink() CPU hotplug ------------------- ----------- on_each_cpu() CPU1 moves objects to CPU1's shrink_qlist on_each_cpu() returns CPU1 goes offline kasan_cpu_offline() drains cpu_quarantine leaves shrink_qlist untouched for_each_online_cpu() skips CPU1

The objects left on CPU1's shrink_qlist are not returned to the slab allocator. This may prevent kmem_cache_shrink() from releasing slabs that would otherwise become empty. If CPU1 remains offline, a later kmem_cache_destroy() also skips the list and can report that the cache still contains objects.

An intermittent occurrence was observed with a virtio-9p filesystem. The mount and umount commands both returned 0, but the kernel logged the following during the userspace-triggered teardown:

[ 2994.380134][ T111] BUG 9p-fcall-cache-1 (Tainted: G B ): Objects remaining on __kmem_cache_shutdown() [ 2994.381140][ T111] Object 0xff11000004361118 @offset=4376 [ 2994.381607][ T111] Allocated in p9_fcall_init+0x201/0x400 age=19564 cpu=1 pid=104 [ 2994.382591][ T111] p9_fcall_init+0x201/0x400 [ 2994.382810][ T111] p9_tag_alloc+0x12f/0x700 [ 2994.382982][ T111] p9_client_prepare_req+0x102/0x3e0 [ 2994.383165][ T111] p9_client_rpc+0x1ab/0xa50 [ 2994.383334][ T111] p9_client_getattr_dotl+0xb0/0x1a0 [ 2994.383515][ T111] v9fs_vfs_getattr_dotl+0x115/0x360 [ 2994.383719][ T111] vfs_getattr_nosec+0x22c/0x3a0 [ 2994.383910][ T111] vfs_statx+0xd7/0x170 [ 2994.384062][ T111] vfs_fstatat+0x45/0x80 [ 2994.384215][ T111] __do_sys_newfstatat+0x84/0xe0 [ 2994.384386][ T111] do_syscall_64+0x115/0x6a0 [ 2994.384566][ T111] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f [ 2994.399720][ T111] WARNING: mm/slub.c:1244 at __kmem_cache_shutdown+0x363/0x500, CPU#0: busybox/111 [ 2994.405655][ T111] Call Trace: [ 2994.406325][ T111] kmem_cache_destroy+0x73/0x1b0 [ 2994.406630][ T111] p9_client_destroy+0x271/0x3c0 [ 2994.407210][ T111] v9fs_session_close+0x3c/0x260 [ 2994.407409][ T111] v9fs_kill_super+0x48/0x90 [ 2994.407584][ T111] deactivate_locked_super+0xa3/0x160 [ 2994.407778][ T111] cleanup_mnt+0x1dd/0x3e0

Thus, a successful umount left objects in the 9p fcall cache and prevented the cache from being destroyed cleanly.

Per-CPU shrink_qlist storage exists for every possible CPU, and each list is protected by its own raw spinlock. Iterate over possible CPUs so that a list populated before its CPU went offline is drained as well.

for_each_possible_cpu() can do more work than for_each_online_cpu(), but this change only affects CONFIG_KASAN_GENERIC kernels. The extra work is limited to cache shrink and cache destruction paths and does not affect the normal allocation/free fast path. It adds one raw-spinlock-protected scan of each possible CPU's shrink list. These lists are normally empty; a non-empty list is traversed to remove objects belonging to the cache being shrunk or destroyed.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.157, 6.12.109, 6.18.50, 7.2.4, 7.3
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.111-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.6-1
  • linux-6.12 Debian 12 6.12.111-1~deb12u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-93208

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.17
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.16
  • linux-hwe-7.0 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-7.0 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-93208

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

  • kernel-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.2.8-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11893-1

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-2026-93208 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: kasan: fix cache shrink race with CPU hotplug

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-selftests-internal Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8
    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

0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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