CVE-2024-42096EPSS p13.8%
CVE-2024-42096CVE-2024-42096
linux / linux_kernel
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
x86: stop playing stack games in profile_pc()
The 'profile_pc()' function is used for timer-based profiling, which
isn't really all that relevant any more to begin with, but it also ends
up making assumptions based on the stack layout that aren't necessarily
valid.
Basically, the code tries to account the time spent in spinlocks to the
caller rather than the spinlock, and while I support that as a concept,
it's not worth the code complexity or the KASAN warnings when no serious
profiling is done using timers anyway these days.
And the code really does depend on stack layout that is only true in the
simplest of cases. We've lost the comment at some point (I think when
the 32-bit and 64-bit code was unified), but it used to say:
Assume the lock function has either no stack frame or a copy
of eflags from PUSHF.
which explains why it just blindly loads a word or two straight off the
stack pointer and then takes a
Scoring
| CVSS | 5.5 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| EPSS | 0.24% probability of exploitation · percentile 13.8% · 2026-10-17T12:00:28Z |
| Last modified | 2026-10-15 |