kcov: fix data corruption and race conditions on PREEMPT_RT
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: kcov: fix data corruption and race conditions on PREEMPT_RT syzbot is reporting KCOV state corruption on PREEMPT_RT kernels, for the temporary storage used for saving/restoring remote KCOV state is currently allocated as the per-CPU area. On PREEMPT_RT kernels, softirq handlers run as preemptible task threads (e.g., ksoftirqd). If a softirq context preempts a task running a remote KCOV session, it safely saves the task's state into the per-CPU area. However, if that softirq thread is subsequently preempted by a higher- priority softirq thread on the same CPU, the second softirq will overwrite the same per-CPU area, permanently destroying the original task's KCOV state. Fix this data corruption by moving the temporary storage from the per-CPU area to the per-thread area. Since each softirq thread now owns its own task context, nested softirq preemption no longer causes data overwrites. Note that while the temporary storage is now on a per-thread basis, the per-CPU kcov_percpu_data.lock must be retained, for we need to ensure that kcov_remote_start() and kcov_remote_stop() operate atomically without racing against asynchronous interrupts that manipulate the current task's KCOV state. It is likely that GFP_KERNEL allocation by vmalloc_node() in kcov_init() has already called panic() before returning NULL, for there will be no OOM-killable userspace processes when __init function of built-in module runs. But this patch also fixes crashing the kernel when vmalloc_node() in kcov_init() returned NULL, for kcov_init() left per-CPU irq_area == NULL but kcov_remote_start() depends on per-CPU irq_area != NULL, resulting in (1) doing vmalloc() in kcov_remote_start() despite !in_task() context (2) out-of-array-bounds access if (1) succeeded but kcov->remote_size < CONFIG_KCOV_IRQ_AREA_SIZE (3) always leak memory allocated by (1), eventually killing all OOM-killable userspace processes problems.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 5.8 and later | 5.10.269, 5.15.220, 6.1.185, 6.6.154, 6.12.106, 6.18.47, 7.1.11, 7.2.1, 7.3 | Patch available | CNA |
- Linux VendorLinux Affected 5.8 and later Fixed in 5.10.269, 5.15.220, 6.1.185, 6.6.154, 6.12.106, 6.18.47, 7.1.11, 7.2.1, 7.3 Patch available CNA
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 5.10.269, 5.15.220, 6.1.185, 6.6.154, 6.12.106, 6.18.47, 7.1.11, 7.2.1, 7.3
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 7 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 OpenShift Container Platform 4
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-80916
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-cjj8-h3vv-gx8r
- 2026-10-19 Fix available: Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-10-20 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
- 2026-10-20 CVSS score added · Red Hat
- 2026-11-06 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
Other 9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ef7048d8a614c5f5a9b20513a5428101a744514e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8ed3ddf23d39bf5338406bd9f8863d44748cf6ce
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5dc59fc959b2b5742985d7ef24bccd1868217dc2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a2fb8222cde23b0001812ed3acb7c0ea36dd94e2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/18799e858b407bf355383c9dd6c06477aa437134
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e11f5b48c82703242a3be7a7ae4b4940b4cb4610
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/22670d1552fe155822b2abf91f920925f7d067b4
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f8c9a3ec36b4ee3d4701b9be08f40e7bfbf89761
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2eed77fdcb0cc48e8eccb2bcd4b7f2c6d650e84c
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Sources
- CVE-2026-80916 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-80916 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-cjj8-h3vv-gx8r · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-80916 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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