NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting torvalds/linux package, versions [6.1.178,6.1.191)[6.6.145,6.6.160)[6.12.97,6.12.114)[6.18.40,6.18.52)[5.10.261,5.11)[5.15.212,5.16)[7.1.5,7.2)[7.2,7.2.6)
Threat Intelligence
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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- published11 Oct 2026
- disclosed17 Sept 2026
- creditUnknown
Introduced: 17 Sep 2026
CVE-2026-90179 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade torvalds/linux to version 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12.114, 6.18.52, 5.11, 5.16, 7.2, 7.2.6 or higher.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to NULL Pointer Dereference in the change_hat process. An attacker can cause a deadlock and make processes unresponsive by triggering a situation where a new learning profile is created while holding a lock, leading to a self-blocking mutex. This can result in denial of service as affected processes become unkillable and further operations involving hat changes also hang.
Note: The Linux kernel project assigns a CVE to every bug fix it ships, whether or not the bug has been shown to be exploitable. This advisory was generated from that process and has not been individually assessed for exploitability. See the kernel's CVE process documentation: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/cve.rst