VulnerabilityPublished 29 Jul 2026Updated 19 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-64560: Linux kernel · posix-cpu-timers: Prevent UAF caused by non-leader exec() race

Affects Linux kernelSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.8 High · fixed in e74443f5db0037c556ef436fa64b88bf4ea08f83 : patch Linux kernel soon.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 13:47 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.8High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS

0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 42% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

Exploitation: No evidence of active exploitation and no public proof of concept
Automatable: Attackers cannot reliably automate steps 1–4 of the kill chain
Technical impact: Total control over the software or total information disclosure

CISA SSVC assessment, 2026-10-16.

Patch

Available – fixed in e74443f5db0037c556ef436fa64b88bf4ea08f83, d8bcb28abad857f1415da7656f19b2ada90af04f, cc35ddbc497311e0b6b9a6a6a4f4d1217d6ab1aa +5

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 29 Jul 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade to a fixed release listed under Affected software.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < e74443f5db0037c556ef436fa64b88bf4ea08f83	Fixed in e74443f5db0037c556ef436fa64b88bf4ea08f83
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < d8bcb28abad857f1415da7656f19b2ada90af04f	Fixed in d8bcb28abad857f1415da7656f19b2ada90af04f
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < cc35ddbc497311e0b6b9a6a6a4f4d1217d6ab1aa	Fixed in cc35ddbc497311e0b6b9a6a6a4f4d1217d6ab1aa
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < ad1cafa1bdaa71da85d71cac053838bbe97852b6	Fixed in ad1cafa1bdaa71da85d71cac053838bbe97852b6
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < 920f893f735e92ba3a1cd9256899a186b161928d	Fixed in 920f893f735e92ba3a1cd9256899a186b161928d
LinuxLinux	Affected ≥ 55e8c8eb2c7b6bf30e99423ccfe7ca032f498f59, < 67aa823e3e8c229c6d374df79c804f6721cb83b6	Fixed in 67aa823e3e8c229c6d374df79c804f6721cb83b6

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: posix-cpu-timers: Prevent UAF caused by non-leader exec() race Wongi and Jungwoo decoded and reported a non-leader exec() related race which can result in an UAF: sys_timer_delete() exec() posix_cpu_timer_del() // Observes old leader p = pid_task(pid, pid_type); de_thread() switch_leader(); release_task(old_leader) __exit_signal(old_leader) sighand = lock(old_leader, sighand); posix_cpu_timers*_exit(); sighand = lock_task_sighand(p) unhash_task(old_leader); sh = lock(p, sighand) old_leader->sighand = NULL; unlock(sighand); (p->sighand == NULL) unlock(sh) return NULL; // Returns without action if(!sighand) return 0; free_posix_timer(); This is "harmless" unless the deleted timer was armed and enqueued in p->signal because on exec() a TGID targeted timer is inherited. As sys_timer_delete() freed the underlying posix timer object run_posix_cpu_timers() or any timerqueue related add/delete operations on other timers will access the freed object's timerqueue node, which results in an UAF. There is a similar problem vs. posix_cpu_timer_set(). For regular posix timers it just transiently returns -ESRCH to user space, but for the use case in do_cpu_nanosleep() it's the same UAF just that the k_itimer is allocated on the stack. Also posix_cpu_timer_rearm() fails to rearm the timer, which means it stops to expire. While debating solutions Frederic pointed out another problem: posix_cpu_timer_del(tmr) __exit_signal(p) posix_cpu_timers*_exit(p); unhash_task(p); p->sighand = NULL; sh = lock_task_sighand(p) sighand = p->sighand; if (!sighand) return NULL; lock(sighand); if (!sh) WARN_ON_ONCE(timer_queued(tmr)); On weakly ordered architectures it is not guaranteed that posix_cpu_timer_del() will observe the stores in posix_cpu_timers*_exit() when p->sighand is observed as NULL, which means the WARN() can be a false positive. Solve these issues by: 1) Changing the store in __exit_signal() to smp_store_release(). 2) Adding a smp_acquire__after_ctrl_dep() into the !sighand path of lock_task_sighand(). 3) Creating a helper function for looking up the task and locking sighand which does not return when sighand == NULL. Instead it retries the task lookup and only if that fails it gives up. 4) Using that helper in the three affected functions. #1/#2 ensures that the reader side which observes sighand == NULL also observes all preceeding stores, i.e. the stores in posix_cpu_timers*_exit() and the ones in unhash_task(). #3 ensures that the above described non-leader exec() situation is handled gracefully. When the task lookup returns the old leader, but sighand == NULL then it retries. In the non-leader exec() case the subsequent task lookup will observe the new leader due to #1/#2. In normal exit() scenarios the subsequent lookup fails. When the task lookup fails, the function also checks whether the timer is still enqueued and issues a warning if that's the case. Unfortunately there is nothing which can be done about it, but as the task is already not longer visible the timer should not be accessed anymore. This check also requires memory ordering, which is not provided when the first lookup fails. To achieve that the check is preceeded by a smp_rmb() which pairs with the smp_wmb() in write_seqlock() in __exit_signal(). That ensures that the stores in posix_cpu_timers*_exit() are visible. The history of the non-leader exec() issue goes back to the early days of posix CPU timers, which stored a pointer to the group leader task in the timer. That obviously fails when a non-leader exec() switches the leader. commit e0a70217107e ("posix-cpu-timers: workaround to suppress the problems with mt exec") added a temporary workaround for that in 2010 which surv ---truncated---

CWE-362Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition') (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: MediumOWASP Top 10 A06:2025: Insecure Design (opens in a new tab)
The product contains a concurrent code sequence that requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence operating concurrently.
Architecture and Design
In languages that support it, use synchronization primitives. Only wrap these around critical code to minimize the impact on performance.
Architecture and Design
Use thread-safe capabilities such as the data access abstraction in Spring.
Architecture and Design
Minimize the usage of shared resources in order to remove as much complexity as possible from the control flow and to reduce the likelihood of unexpected conditions occurring.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Secure Design Principles (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V1.11.2 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions (opens in a new tab)
Leveraging Race Conditions (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

WeaknessesCWE-362

Technical details

References

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