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CVE-2026-72094
dma-buf: dma-fence: Fix potential NULL pointer dereference
Published 2026-08-15 (2 months ago) by the Linux kernel CNA. Subsystem drivers/dma-buf. Debian urgency: unimportant.
What to do, per Debian release
Debian's own status for CVE-2026-72094 in every release this site tracks, and what each one means in practice. Every status below is the one the Debian Security Team publishes for this CVE. source
| Release | Status | Version | What this means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 12bookworm | not affected | 6.1.190-1 | Nothing to do. bookworm never shipped the vulnerable code. |
| Debian 13trixie | not affected | 6.12.113-1 | Nothing to do. trixie never shipped the vulnerable code. |
| Debian 14forky | fixed | 7.1.5-1 | Update the kernel and reboot. Fixed in 7.1.5-1. A running kernel keeps the old code until the machine restarts. |
| Debian unstablesid | fixed | 7.1.5-1 | Update the kernel and reboot. Fixed in 7.1.5-1. A running kernel keeps the old code until the machine restarts. |
The vulnerability
What the bug is
The commit mentioned in the fixes tag below introduced a mechanism through which fence producers can fully decouple from fence consumers. This, desirable, mechanism is based on the fence's signaled-bit as the "decoupling point". A sophisticated interaction between RCU and atomic instructions attempts to ensure that fence consumers can still interact with fence producers through the dma_fence_ops (callback pointers into the producer). This is the desired behavior: to check for decoupling, the signaled-bit is first checked. If it's not yet signaled, RCU ensures that the ops pointer cannot yet be NULL. Hereby, dma_fence_signal_timestamp_locked() first sets the signaled-bit, and then sets the ops pointer to NULL. Readers first load the ops pointer, and then check through the signaled-bit whether the pointer can legally be accessed. These set and load operations could occur out of order on weakly ordered platforms. This problem can be solved very elegantly by using the ops pointer itself as the synchronization point. The pointer is either NULL, or cannot become NULL while it is being used thanks to RCU. Replace the signaled-bit check in dma_fence_timeline_name() and dma_fence_driver_name().
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.
drivers/dma-buf/dma-fence.c
- What this is
- SYNC FILE FRAMEWORKMAINTAINERS section matched on drivers/dma-buf/dma-fence* · linux-media@vger.kernel.org · Maintained
Check it on the machine
grep -w CONFIG_DMA_SHARED_BUFFER /boot/config-$(uname -r)Reads the booted kernel's own configuration, on the machine and nowhere else. =y is built in, =m is a module, and an is not set line means the code is not there.
Show whether Debian builds this, per release
Debian builds this code. Every release below compiles the affected file into the kernels it ships.
- bookworm, trixie, forky, sidy
- y
- built into the kernel image on every flavour - only a patch removes it
- Build switch
- CONFIG_DMA_SHARED_BUFFER
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 kbuild Makefiles Debian linux-config packages
Signals
- Published
- 2026-08-15 (2 months ago)source
- CVSS
- no vector published, unrated
- Attack vector
- not published
- EPSS
- 0.20%, higher than 8.9% of all CVEssource
- CISA KEV
- not listedthe KEV catalogue
- Debian urgency
- unimportantsource
- Subsystem
- drivers/dma-buf
Upstream fixes
The versions the CNA records as introducing and fixing this, and the commit for each. source
| Introduced | Fixed in | Commit |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | 7.1.5 | 15ecfdf0ef6f |
| 7.1 | 7.2 | 035219a760ed |
Why the CNA scored it this way
The kernel CNA published no CVSS vector and no reasoning for CVE-2026-72094, which is why it is shown as unrated rather than given an invented score. 6,405 of the 20,413 CVEs here carry reasoning; this is not one of them.