Medium [CVE-2026-53106] Do not allow deleting local storage in NMI
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-53106 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat package: kernel-rt.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Do not allow deleting local storage in NMI Currently, local storage may deadlock when deferring freeing selem or local storage through kfree_rcu(), call_rcu() or call_rcu_tasks_trace() in NMI or reentrant.
Since deleting selem in NMI is an unlikely use case, partially mitigate it by returning error when calling from bpf_xxx_storage_delete() helpers in NMI. Note that, it is still possible to deadlock through reentrant.
A full mitigation requires returning error when irqs_disabled() is true, which, however is too heavy-handed for bpf_xxx_storage_delete(). The long-term solution requires _nolock versions of call_rcu.
Another possible solution is to defer the free through irq_work [0], but it would grow the size of selem, which is non-ideal.
The check is only needed in bpf_selem_unlink(), which is used by helpers and syscalls. bpf_selem_unlink_nofail() is fine as it is called during map and owner tear down that never run in NMI or reentrant. [0] This vulnerability can lead to a system deadlock when local storage is deleted within a Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) context.
An attacker could potentially exploit this by triggering the deletion of BPF local storage during an NMI, resulting in a denial of service. Red Hat severity: Low — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
Weakness: CWE-833.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
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