CVE-2026-98818
CVE-2026-98818CVE-2026-98818
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/slab: do not wake up kswapd in __kfree_rcu_sheaf()
Since kfree_rcu() can be called under pi_lock (a raw spinlock in the
scheduler), kfree_rcu() itself should never allocate memory with
__GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM as waking up kswapd ends up acquiring pi_lock,
which leads to a deadlock.
Reproducing the issue even intentionally was not straightforward.
The set_cpus_allowed_force() path that is called under pi_lock is
exercised very rarely, and competing tasks that allocate memory will
most likely wake kswapd up.
Therefore the existence of the deadlock was verified with a modified
kernel that has a lockdep map for waking up kswapd:
======================================================
WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected
7.2.0-rc1-slab-for-next+ #10 Not tainted
------------------------------------------------------
git/6660 is trying to acquire lock:
ffff8e524533c550 (&p->pi_lock){-.-.}-{2:
Scoring
| Last modified | 2026-10-18 |