Vulnerability in Linux
CVE-2026-23138
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Add recursion protection in kernel stack trace recording A bug was reported about an infinite recursion caused by tracing the rcu events with the kernel stack trace trigger enabled. The stack trace code called back into RCU which then called the stack trace again. Expand the ftrace recursion protection to add a set of bits to protect events from recursion. Each bit represents the context that the event is in (normal, softirq, interrupt and NMI). Have the stack trace code use the interrupt context to protect against recursion. Note, the bug showed an issue in both the RCU code as well as the tracing stacktrace code. This only handles the tracing stack trace side of the bug. The RCU fix will be handled separately.
EPSS: 0.001 (2.4th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
Affected products
- Linux — versions 5f5fa7ea89dc82d34ed458f4d7a8634e8e9eefce, 5.8, 0
- Linux Linux_kernel — versions 6.19
References
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-23138?
- CVE-2026-23138 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2026-02-14.
- How severe is CVE-2026-23138?
- Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.