CVE-2026-89460: s390/cpum_cf: Handle CPU hotplug via prepare/dead callbacks

Published Sep 11, 2026
·
Updated

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

s390/cpumcf: Handle CPU hotplug via prepare/dead callbacks

The command 'perf stat -e cycles -- <command>' crashes the kernel when CPUs are hotplug added during that run.

Root cause is the allocation of struct cpucfevents at first event initialization. The allocation is dynamic and the first event that has task context creates such a structure for each online CPU. This is not sufficient. CPUs may be offline during event creation and can be set online during the perf run time. For example commands

# echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online # perf stat -e cycles -i -- stress-ng -t10s --matrix X # sleep 1 # echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

create an event for CPUs 0,2-X. Since the events are created with task-context, the scheduler will eventually schedule the program on CPU1. This CPU has not created and initialized any per CPU event infrastructure as that CPU was not online at the time of the perf invocation. Thus when the scheduler runs stress-ng on CPU1, the function cpumfpmuadd() refers to a NULL pointer:

struct cpucfevents cpuhw = thiscpucfhw();

This function call is invoked after the task stress-ng has been made runnable on CPU1. And thiscpucfhw() returns NULL.

The result is a panic: Unable to handle kernel pointer dereference in virtual kernel address space Failing address: 0000000000000000 TEID: 0000000000000483 .... Krnl PSW : 0404d00180000000 000003ef8291fd0c (cpumfpmuadd+0x3c/0x80) .... Call Trace: [<000003ef8291fd0c>] cpumfpmuadd+0x3c/0x80 [<000003ef82bb5e3e>] eventschedin+0xae/0x190 [<000003ef82bb60d6>] mergeschedin+0x1b6/0x390 [<000003ef82bb65b8>] visitgroupsmerge.constprop.0.isra.0+0x308/0x5b0 [<000003ef82bb689a>] pmugroupsschedin+0x3a/0x50 [<000003ef82bb6a30>] ctxschedin+0x180/0x260 [<000003ef82bb780c>] perfeventcontextschedin+0x11c/0x2d0 [<000003ef82bb79ee>] perfeventtaskschedin+0x2e/0xc0 [<000003ef82994834>] finishtaskswitch.isra.0+0x1a4/0x250 .... Last Breaking-Event-Address: [<000003ef8291f1d8>] thiscpucfhw+0x38/0x40

The issue arises only in per-task context when the CPUMF facility is used and the scheduler picks a random CPU for such a process to run on. The scheduler enables the CPUMF infrastructure via PMU callback functions pmu::add() and pmu::del().

Introduce a CPU hotplug prepare/dead callback pair which creates and removes the per CPU counter data while the CPU is offline. Count the users which track every CPU (cpu == -1), that is perfeventopen() events with task context and /dev/hwctr device sessions, in the new counter cpucfroot::tskcnt, protected by pmcreservemutex. This ensures the infrastructure is available when new CPU is selected to run the per-task context process.

In cpumcffreeroot() and cpumcffreecpu() ensure the reference pointer to data structures is set to NULL before the data is freed to prevent interrupt handlers to access stale data.

[gor@linux.ibm.com: change commit message]

Affected Software

1 affected component
Linux Kernel

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Compensating control

    Avoid running per-task context perf stress workloads (e.g., "perf stat -e cycles -- <command>" / stress-ng) while CPU hotplug operations are in progress, because cpumf_pmu_add() may dereference a NULL pointer when CPUs are taken offline/online during perf runtime.

Event History

Sep 11, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·07:43 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·07:43 PM
Description

Frequently Asked Questions

1

Which systems are exposed to this kernel crash?

Systems using the s390 CPU-measurement facility PMU are exposed when a task-context perf event is created while one or more CPUs are offline, and one of those CPUs is brought online before the perf workload finishes.

2

What must occur for the crash to be triggered?

An offline CPU must be hotplugged online during a perf run using a task-context event such as "perf stat -e cycles -- <command>". The scheduler must then run the monitored workload on that newly online CPU, where the per-CPU event structure was not initialized.

3

What can be done if the fix cannot be applied immediately?

Do not hotplug CPUs online while affected task-context perf workloads are running. Ensure the CPUs needed for the workload are online before starting perf, or avoid scheduling the workload on CPUs that were offline when the event was created.

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