CVE-2026-64419 PUBLISHED

mm/shrinker: do not hold RCU lock in shrinker_debugfs_count_show()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 19.07.2026 Published: 25.07.2026 Updated: 25.07.2026

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

mm/shrinker: do not hold RCU lock in shrinker_debugfs_count_show()

Reading the debugfs "count" file of a memcg-aware shrinker can sleep inside an RCU read-side critical section:

BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/cgroup/rstat.c:421 RCU nest depth: 1, expected: 0 css_rstat_flush mem_cgroup_flush_stats zswap_shrinker_count shrinker_debugfs_count_show

shrinker_debugfs_count_show() invokes the ->count_objects() callback under rcu_read_lock(). The zswap callback flushes memcg stats via css_rstat_flush(), which may sleep, so it must not run under RCU.

The RCU lock is not needed here. mem_cgroup_iter() takes RCU internally and returns a memcg holding a css reference (dropped on the next iteration or by mem_cgroup_iter_break()), so the memcg stays alive without it. The shrinker is kept alive by the open debugfs file: shrinker_free() removes the debugfs entries via debugfs_remove_recursive(), which waits for in-flight readers to drain, before call_rcu(..., shrinker_free_rcu_cb). The sibling "scan" handler already invokes the sleeping ->scan_objects() callback with no RCU section.

Drop the rcu_read_lock()/rcu_read_unlock().

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to de5f69b8dae8698ac5e48dfcd30017887cdf4e5a (excl.)
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to e441cbfbd0eaa6404278e985033c33caba4db767 (excl.)
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to 2fed79f0fe8c8d28a972c290dbfd693c3546c8c4 (excl.)
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to 560e21e8ccff813e84d05f6500907c549a3d6985 (excl.)
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to 86237e56091e70f09c0fbf217f9d9c0e08f556c4 (excl.)
  • affected from 5035ebc644aec92d55d1bbfe042f35341e4bffb5 to b902890c62d200b3509cb5e09cf1e0a66553c128 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.0 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.0 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.178 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.145 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.96 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.39 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.4 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2-rc1 to * (incl.)

References