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Advisory severityMedium5.5Red Hat Linux

Medium [CVE-2026-53166] Prevent NULL pointer dereference in remove_waiter on self-deadlock

This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-53166 affecting NVIDIA for RHEL 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2026-53166 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

CVE-2026-53166
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: futex/requeue: Prevent NULL pointer dereference in remove_waiter() on self-deadlock When FUTEX_CMP_REQUEUE_PI requeues a non-top waiter that already owns the target PI futex, task_blocks_on_rt_mutex() returns -EDEADLK before setting waiter->task.

The subsequent remove_waiter() in rt_mutex_start_proxy_lock() dereferences the NULL waiter->task, causing a kernel crash. Add a self-deadlock check for non-top waiters before calling rt_mutex_start_proxy_lock(), analogous to the top-waiter check in futex_lock_pi_atomic().

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's futex (Fast Userspace Mutex) requeue mechanism. This issue, specifically within the `remove_waiter()` function during a self-deadlock scenario, leads to a kernel crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). Weakness: CWE-476.

Affected products named by the advisory: NVIDIA for RHEL 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support; and 9 more.

Is CVE-2026-53166 exploited?

No exploitation is reported in the sources VulniPulse tracks: CVE-2026-53166 is not in the CISA KEV catalog (checked ) and this advisory does not report exploitation. That is not proof the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53166?

Upgrade to a fixed release named by Red Hat:

  • kernel-0:6.12.0-231.16.el10nv
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-259.26.el10nv
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-211.33.1.el10_2
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-55.89.1.el10_0
  • kernel-rt-0:3.10.0-1160.156.1.rt56.1308.el7
  • kernel-0:3.10.0-1160.156.1.el7
  • kernel-rt-0:4.18.0-553.143.1.rt7.484.el8_10
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-553.143.1.el8_10
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-305.198.1.el8_4
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-372.201.1.el8_6
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-477.152.1.el8_8
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-687.25.1.el9_8

20 more fixed releases are listed below.

Confirm against the vendor advisory before you patch.

Affected versions

No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative. Check it before change work.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

Fixed versions
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-231.16.el10nv
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-259.26.el10nv
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-211.33.1.el10_2
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-55.89.1.el10_0
  • kernel-rt-0:3.10.0-1160.156.1.rt56.1308.el7
  • kernel-0:3.10.0-1160.156.1.el7
  • kernel-rt-0:4.18.0-553.143.1.rt7.484.el8_10
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-553.143.1.el8_10
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-305.198.1.el8_4
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-372.201.1.el8_6
  • kernel-0:4.18.0-477.152.1.el8_8
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-687.25.1.el9_8
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-284.181.1.el9_2
  • kernel-rt-0:5.14.0-284.181.1.rt14.466.el9_2
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-427.138.1.el9_4
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-570.128.1.el9_6
  • RHSA-2026:37728
  • RHSA-2026:73187
  • RHSA-2026:38492
  • RHSA-2026:41062
  • RHSA-2026:41234
  • RHSA-2026:41235
  • RHSA-2026:39082
  • RHSA-2026:39083
  • RHSA-2026:39984
  • RHSA-2026:40068
  • RHSA-2026:40760
  • RHSA-2026:38491
  • RHSA-2026:40082
  • RHSA-2026:39983
  • RHSA-2026:41063
  • RHSA-2026:40425

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation checklist

Recommended fix / mitigation
  • See the security bulletin for a detailed mitigation procedure.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 14 days ago·verify at source

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