CVE-2026-23134 PUBLISHED

slab: fix kmalloc_nolock() context check for PREEMPT_RT

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.01.2026 Published: 14.02.2026 Updated: 14.02.2026

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

slab: fix kmalloc_nolock() context check for PREEMPT_RT

On PREEMPT_RT kernels, local_lock becomes a sleeping lock. The current check in kmalloc_nolock() only verifies we're not in NMI or hard IRQ context, but misses the case where preemption is disabled.

When a BPF program runs from a tracepoint with preemption disabled (preempt_count > 0), kmalloc_nolock() proceeds to call local_lock_irqsave() which attempts to acquire a sleeping lock, triggering:

BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 6128 preempt_count: 2, expected: 0

Fix this by checking !preemptible() on PREEMPT_RT, which directly expresses the constraint that we cannot take a sleeping lock when preemption is disabled. This encompasses the previous checks for NMI and hard IRQ contexts while also catching cases where preemption is disabled.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from af92793e52c3a99b828ed4bdd277fd3e11c18d08 to f60ba4a97ae3f94e4818722ed2e4d260bbb17b44 (excl.)
  • affected from af92793e52c3a99b828ed4bdd277fd3e11c18d08 to 99a3e3a1cfc93b8fe318c0a3a5cfb01f1d4ad53c (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.18 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.18 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.8 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19 to * (incl.)

References