CRITICAL
kthread AffinityNode UAF
CVE-2026-43402
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
KernelScan AI6.0MEDIUM
01Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: kthread: consolidate kthread exit paths to prevent use-after-free Guillaume reported crashes via corrupted RCU callback function pointers during KUnit testing. The crash was traced back to the pidfs rhashtable conversion which replaced the 24-byte rb_node with an 8-byte rhash_head in struct pid, shrinking it from 160 to 144 bytes. struct kthread (without CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP) is also 144 bytes. With CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT and SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN both round up to 192 bytes and share the same slab cache. struct pid.rcu.func and struct kthread.affinity_node both sit at offset 0x78. When a kthread exits via make_task_dead() it bypasses kthread_exit() and misses the affinity_node cleanup. free_kthread_struct() frees the memory while the node is still linked into the global kthread_affinity_list. A subsequent list_del() by another kthread writes through dangling list pointers into the freed and reused memory, corrupting the pid's rcu.func pointer. Instead of patching free_kthread_struct() to handle the missed cleanup, consolidate all kthread exit paths. Turn kthread_exit() into a macro that calls do_exit() and add kthread_do_exit() which is called from do_exit() for any task with PF_KTHREAD set. This guarantees that kthread-specific cleanup always happens regardless of the exit path - make_task_dead(), direct do_exit(), or kthread_exit(). Replace __to_kthread() with a new tsk_is_kthread() accessor in the public header. Export do_exit() since module code using the kthread_exit() macro now needs it directly.
02KernelScan AI Analysis
Risk summary
Attackers with root privileges on the local system can trigger a use-after-free vulnerability in the kthread subsystem by exploiting missed affinity_node cleanup during abnormal kthread exit paths. The dangling pointer on a global kernel list leads to memory corruption when a subsequent list_del() writes into freed memory reused for a struct pid, resulting in RCU callback corruption and kernel panics.
Vulnerability analysis
The vulnerability occurs when a kthread exits via make_task_dead() instead of kthread_exit(), bypassing the affinity_node cleanup. free_kthread_struct() frees the kthread memory while the node remains linked into the global kthread_affinity_list. Because CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT and SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN cause struct pid and struct kthread to share a slab cache, the freed memory can be reused for a struct pid object. A subsequent list_del() by another kthread then writes through dangling list pointers into the reused memory, corrupting the pid's rcu.func pointer and causing RCU callback corruption and kernel crashes. The fix consolidates all kthread exit paths by turning kthread_exit() into a macro that calls do_exit() and adding kthread_do_exit() so that kthread-specific cleanup always runs inside do_exit() for any PF_KTHREAD task.
03Fix Versions
| Branch | Fixed in | Patch commit |
|---|---|---|
| 6.18 | 6.18.19 | 4729c7b00a34 |
| 6.19 | 6.19.9 | 5a591d7a5e48 |
| mainline | 7.0 | 28aaa9c39945 |