CVE-2026-64374

What the bug is

RT migration is done aggressively. When a CPU schedules out a high priority RT task for a lower priority task, it will look to see if there's any RT tasks that are waiting to run on another CPU that is of higher priority than the task this CPU is about to run. If it finds one, it will pull that task over to the CPU and allow it to run there instead. Normally, this pulling is done by looking at the RT overloaded mask (rto) which contains all the CPUs in the scheduler domain with RT tasks that are waiting to run due to a higher priority RT task currently running on their CPU. The CPU that is about to schedule a lower priority task will grab the rq lock of the overloaded CPU and move the RT task from that CPU's runqueue to the local one and schedule the higher priority RT task. This caused issues when a lot of CPUs would schedule a lower priority task at the same time. They would all try to grab the same runqueue lock of the CPU with the overloaded RT tasks. Only the first CPU that got in will get that task. All the others would wait until they got the runqueue lock and see there's nothing to pull and do nothing. On systems with lots of CPUs, this caused a large latency (up to 500us) which is beyond what PREEMPT_RT is to allow. The solution to that was to create an RT_PUSH_IPI logic. When any CPU wanted to pull a task, instead of grabbing the runqueue lock of the overloaded CPU, it would start by sending an IPI to the overloaded CPU, and that IPI handler would have the CPU with the waiting RT task do a push instead. Then that handler would send an IPI to the next CPU with overloaded RT tasks, and so on. Note, after the first CPU starts this process, if another CPU wanted to do a pull, it would see that the process has already begun and would only increment a counter to have the IPIs continue again. The RT_PUSH_IPI solved the latency problem with PREEMPT_RT but could cause a new issue with non PREEMPT_RT. Namely, softirqs run in a threaded context on PREEMPT_RT but they can run in an interrupt context in non-RT. If an IPI lands on a CPU that has just woken up multiple RT tasks and the current CPU is running a non RT or a low priority RT task, instead of doing a push, it would simply do a schedule on that CPU. But if a softirq was also executing on this CPU, the schedule would need to wait until the softirq finished. Until then, the CPU would still be considered overloaded as there are RT tasks still waiting to run on it. A live lock occurred on a workload that was doing heavy networking traffic on a large machine where the softirqs would run 500us out of 750us. And it would also be waking up RT tasks, causing the RT pull logic to be constantly executed. When a softirq triggered on a CPU with RT tasks queued but not running yet, and the other CPUs would see this CPU as being overloaded, they would send an IPI over to it. The CPU would notice that the waiting RT tasks are of higher priority than the currently running task and simply schedule that CPU instead. But because the softirq was executing, before it could schedule, it would receive another IPI to do the same. The amount of IPIs would slow down the currently running softirq so much that before it could return back to task context, it would execute another softirq never allowing the CPU to schedule. This live locked that CPU. As RT_PUSH_IPI was created to help PREEMPT_RT, make it default off if PREEMPT_RT is not enabled.

Where it lives

The fix touches these files. If the subsystem is one you do not use, the practical exposure is lower, though the package is still the vulnerable one.

kernel/sched/features.h

What this is

SCHEDULERMAINTAINERS section matched on kernel/sched/ · linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org · Maintained

Show whether Debian builds this, per release

Not established. This site could not find the build rule for the affected file in the kernel trees Debian ships, so it has no answer about whether Debian compiles this code. Read that as unknown, never as absent.

• bookworm, trixie, forky, sid, bookworm · linux-6.12?

?

not established - no Makefile entry for the affected file

Where a release above reads "not established", no build rule for the affected file was found in that release's kernel tree. That is a gap in this lookup, not a finding that the code is absent.

From the configuration Debian publishes for every kernel flavour it builds. It covers only the architectures Debian ships a linux-config package for, and nothing about a kernel you built yourself. Debian's own status above stays authoritative about the source package.MAINTAINERS

Signals

Published

2026-07-25 (3 months ago)source

CVSS

7.5 high
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:Hsource recompute it

Attack vector

network (AV:N)source

EPSS

0.39%, higher than 31.2% of all CVEssource

CISA KEV

not listedthe KEV catalogue

Debian urgency

not yet assignedsource

Subsystem

kernel/sched

Upstream fixes

The versions the CNA records as introducing and fixing this, and the commit for each. source

Introduced	Fixed in	Commit
4.1	5.10.261	b99f04ae3d20
4.1	5.15.212	d8312a56d9a1
4.1	6.1.178	44aae426dbfd
4.1	6.6.145	860aaff72c84
4.1	6.12.96	89237c8fc15d
4.1	6.18.39	4bd0da48fbc1
4.1	7.1.4	a18f80bf5359
4.1	7.2	dd29c017aed6

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