CVE-2026-52991 — sched/psi: fix race between file release and pressure write

Affected: Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/psi: fix race between file release and pressure write

A potential race condition exists between pressure write and cgroup file release regarding the priv member of struct kernfs_open_file, which triggers the uaf reported in [1].

Consider the following scenario involving execution on two separate CPUs:

CPU0 CPU1 ==== ==== vfs_rmdir() kernfs_iop_rmdir() cgroup_rmdir() cgroup_kn_lock_live() cgroup_destroy_locked() cgroup_addrm_files() cgroup_rm_file() kernfs_remove_by_name() kernfs_remove_by_name_ns() vfs_write() __kernfs_remove() new_sync_write() kernfs_drain() kernfs_fop_write_iter() kernfs_drain_open_files() cgroup_file_write() kernfs_release_file() pressure_write() cgroup_file_release() ctx = of->priv; kfree(ctx); of->priv = NULL; cgroup_kn_unlock() cgroup_kn_lock_live() cgroup_get(cgrp) cgroup_kn_unlock() if (ctx->psi.trigger) // here, trigger uaf for ctx, that is of->priv

The cgroup_rmdir() is protected by the cgroup_mutex, it also safeguards the memory deallocation of of->priv performed within cgroup_file_release(). However, the operations involving of->priv executed within pressure_write() are not entirely covered by the protection of cgroup_mutex. Consequently, if the code in pressure_write(), specifically the section handling the ctx variable executes after cgroup_file_release() has completed, a…

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CVE-2026-52991 — sched/psi: fix race between file release and pressure write