Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Moderate 2026-09-11T00:00:00 kernel: sched/core: Make core-sched flips wait for in-flight selections 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CWE-366

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched/core: Make core-sched flips wait for in-flight selections Core scheduling's pick_next_task() operates on all sibling rqs under one acquisition of the shared core-wide lock. A ->pick_task() that releases the rq lock leaves every sibling __lock momentarily free, letting __sched_core_flip(false) complete mid-selection and rebind rq_lockp() under it. The selection resumes on the split locks, touching sibling state it no longer protects, and __schedule() finally releases a lock that was never taken while leaking the one that was. Count in-flight core-wide selections in the leader's rq->core_pick_in_flight and make __sched_core_flip() wait for the count to drain. The count only changes under the shared lock, which the flip holds while sampling, so no other ordering is needed. The wait can repeat while selections overlap, but the flip backs off between samples and flips are rare cookie-lifetime events. sched_core_cpu_deactivate() moves the count to the new leader - a stale copy left behind would bias it forever if that CPU later returns as its own leader.

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's core scheduling component. A race condition can occur when core scheduling flips complete during task selection, leading to incorrect lock handling. This can result in a resource leak and system instability, potentially causing a denial of service.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Fix deferred kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Fix deferred kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Fix deferred kernel-rt Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Not affected openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Fix deferred openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-89520 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-89520 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-89520.mbox