CVE-2026-74605 eventfs: Use children field for rcu head and add memory barriers
A race condition in the Linux kernel eventfs subsystem can lead to memory corruption and denial of service during inode freeing.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-74605?
CVE-2026-74605 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 22 Aug 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:
eventfs: Use children field for rcu head and add memory barriers
When an eventfs inode is freed, it sets ei->is_freed and then uses its ei->list to add it to the srcu link list as the list field is a union with the rcu list head. As the ei->list is used to iterate over an SRCU protected list without taking the eventfs_mutex, there's nothing stopping the iteration over that list to see the ei->rcu instead of the ei->list and it will read a corrupt target.
To fix this, change the union of the rcu list head with the children list. On freeing the eventfs inode, set the is_free and execute a smp_wmb() before adding the eventfs inode to the SRCU list.
On iteration of the ei->children list, at the start, execute a smp_rmb() and then read the is_freed of the ei to see if the children list is still valid. If is_freed is set, then the ei_child read is not valid and the loop should exit immediately.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-74605?
How do I fix CVE-2026-74605?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-74605 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-74605 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-97088, BELL-CVE-2026-74605, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-74605, GHSA-c64v-3vw2-pvwh, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-74605.