CVE-2026-74658

What the bug is

A robust futex unlock stores 0 over the whole futex value - wiping FUTEX_WAITERS - and wakes a single waiter. That wakeup is a one-shot notification: the protocol relies on its recipient to either acquire the futex (and eventually unlock while aware of the remaining contention) or re-arm FUTEX_WAITERS before sleeping again. If the woken waiter is killed before it can do either, the kernel must jump in and wake the next task down the line. This is a known complication of the futex protocol with a previous partial fix in commit ca16d5bee598 ("futex: Prevent robust futex exit race"). Unfortunately, that fix is insufficient. If a third task re-acquired the futex through the uncontended fast path in the meantime, the notification is lost: robust exit processing sees that it is owned by another task and does nothing, while the new owner sees no FUTEX_WAITERS when it unlocks and wakes nobody. The remaining waiters sleep forever behind a free futex: A owns the futex, B and C sleep in FUTEX_WAIT uval == A | FUTEX_WAITERS A robust unlock: store 0, FUTEX_WAKE(1) wakes B uval == 0 D fast path acquire: cmpxchg(0 -> D) uval == D, no FUTEX_WAITERS B killed before acting on the wakeup B exit walk, pending op: owner D != B -> no action D unlock: no FUTEX_WAITERS -> no wake C sleeps forever This is clearly a shortcoming in the implementation, which fails to keep the FUTEX_WAITERS bit consistent. Work around this by augmenting the robust list exit processing to also perform the extra wakeup if the futex word is owned by another thread but FUTEX_WAITERS is not set. This does not fix the problem of a non-contended take over/release and free sequence, which has been discussed for years and has been addressed by commit 3ca9595d9fb6 ("futex: Add support for unlocking robust futexes") and subsequent changes, but failed to take the problem described above into account. A more complete solution which is based on the in kernel unlock of contended robust futexes has been discussed in the context of this change and should show up in mainline sooner than later. [ tglx: Amend change log slightly and fixup coding style ]

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/futex/core.c

What this is

FUTEX SUBSYSTEMMAINTAINERS section matched on kernel/futex/* · linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org · Maintained

Check it on the machine

grep -w CONFIG_FUTEX /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, sid, bookworm · linux-6.12y

y

built into the kernel image on every flavour - only a patch removes it

Build switch

CONFIG_FUTEX

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

2026-08-22 (2 months ago)source

CVSS

no vector published, unrated

Attack vector

not published

EPSS

0.18%, higher than 6.8% of all CVEssource

CISA KEV

not listedthe KEV catalogue

Debian urgency

not yet assignedsource

Subsystem

kernel/futex

Upstream fixes

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

Introduced	Fixed in	Commit
5.5	5.10.265	83b0f71d5a31
5.5	5.15.216	a1c2b7b86a94
5.5	6.1.183	33bfa8545810
5.5	6.6.152	aa5c571901c6
5.5	6.12.104	925628656b73
5.5	6.18.45	7b8c53263f88
5.5	7.1.9	7cf710e70f9b
5.5	7.2	6d4514ca9cdf
3.16.82	0	0
4.9.264	0	0
4.14.158	0	0
4.19.87	0	0
5.3.14	0	0
5.4.1	0	0

Debian advisories