Answer in brief
CVE-2026-97938 records a Unknown severity vulnerability in reboot: fix cad_pid use-after-free race. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps Linux/Linux (generic), Linux/Linux (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
A CVSS score is not reported in the current record. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps Linux/Linux (generic), Linux/Linux (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | >=9ec52099e4b8678a60e9f93e41ad87885d64f3e6 <ad72e2566643fff7f01666d845fb026898155e1f || >=9ec52099e4b8678a60e9f93e41ad87885d64f3e6 <9a17b0e053197a6a42cdc75e75a35b17aa662088 || >=9ec52099e4b8678a60e9f93e41ad87885d64f3e6 <5a88f78df753993469dab4d1831f8fb4256a9468 | ad72e2566643fff7f01666d845fb026898155e1f, 9a17b0e053197a6a42cdc75e75a35b17aa662088, 5a88f78df753993469dab4d1831f8fb4256a9468 |
| Linux/Linuxgeneric | 2.6.19 | Not reported |
Published upstream
Sep 25, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Sep 25, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Sep 25, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: reboot: fix cad_pid use-after-free race cad_pid is a single kernel-wide struct pid pointer. proc_do_cad_pid() reads it and passes it to pid_vnr() without protecting the lifetime of the referenced struct pid. A concurrent writer can replace cad_pid and drop the final reference to the old struct pid after the reader has loaded the pointer but before pid_vnr() has finished dereferencing it, causing a use-after-free. kill_cad_pid() has the same lifetime race when it passes cad_pid to kill_pid(). At the time this issue was reported, an unprivileged user could reach the sysctl through user and PID namespaces because cad_pid was registered in pid_table[]. Moving cad_pid back to the global reboot sysctl table corrected that namespace and permission mismatch, but did not fix the underlying lifetime race. Fix this by treating cad_pid as an RCU-protected pointer at both read sites and by waiting for a grace period before dropping the old reference on the write side. call_rcu(&old_pid->rcu, ...) cannot be used here because free_pid() also queues pid->rcu; queueing the same rcu_head twice can corrupt the RCU callback list. Original KASAN crash stack: kernel/pid.c:545 pid_nr_ns() # reads freed pid->level kernel/pid.c:556 pid_vnr() # calls pid_nr_ns() kernel/pid.c:775 proc_do_cad_pid() # calls pid_vnr(cad_pid)
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.