CVE-2026-53370 perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks

What is CVE-2026-53370?

CVE-2026-53370 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 19 Jul 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

perf/x86/intel: Improve validation and configuration of ACR masks

Currently there are several issues on the user space ACR mask validation and configuration. - The validation for user space ACR mask (attr.config2) is incomplete, e.g., the ACR mask could include the index which belongs to another ACR events group, but it's not validated. - An early return on an invalid ACR mask caused all subsequent ACR groups to be skipped. - The stale hardware ACR mask (hw.config1) is not cleared before setting new hardware ACR mask.

The following changes address all of the above issues. - Figure out the event index group of an ACR group. Any bits in the user-space mask not present in the index group are now dropped. - Instead of an early return on invalid bits, drop only the invalid portions and continue iterating through all ACR events to ensure full configuration. - Explicitly clear the stale hardware ACR mask for each event prior to writing the new configuration.

Besides, a non-leader event member of ACR group could be disabled in theory. This could cause bit-shifting errors in the acr_mask of remaining group members. But since ACR sampling requires all events to be active, this should not be a big concern in real use case. Add a "FIXME" comment to notice this risk.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-53370?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53370?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-53370 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-53370 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-53370, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53370, GHSA-6xq9-44c7-g88v, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53370.