tracing: Fix union collision of module and refcnt for dynamic events
Key facts
- Attack vector
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- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
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- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Fixed
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from CNA.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Fix union collision of module and refcnt for dynamic events In 'struct trace_event_call', the 'module' pointer and the 'refcnt' atomic variable share the same memory space in a union. For dynamic events, the union member is 'refcnt', which acts as an active reference counter. When a dynamic event (such as kprobe, uprobe, fprobe, eprobe, or wprobe) has a non-zero reference count (e.g. due to active event triggers or perf attachments), its 'call->module' evaluates to a small non-zero integer instead of NULL. When filtering or setting events for a specific module (e.g., writing ':mod:<module>' to 'set_event'), the code in '__ftrace_set_clr_event_nolock()' and 'update_event_fields()' reads 'call->module' directly without checking whether the event is dynamic. This causes the kernel to treat the small integer (refcnt) as a 'struct module' pointer, leading to a NULL/invalid pointer dereference (Oops) when dereferencing the module name. Fix this by ensuring that the 'TRACE_EVENT_FL_DYNAMIC' flag is checked before treating 'call->module' as a valid pointer in these code paths.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 6.18.42, 7.1.6, 7.2
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Low. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 8 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA 26
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-68174
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-c2f7-rhw7-9m5r
- 2026-10-30 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
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- TI-2022-00125 Integer overflow in kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
- TI-2013-01864 The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
Sources
- CVE-2026-68174 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-68174 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-c2f7-rhw7-9m5r · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-68174 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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