Linux Kernel up to 7.2.6/7.3-rc2 drm/xe xe_device.c guc_ct_send_locked race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as very critical has been reported in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.6/7.3-rc2. The affected element is the function guc_ct_send_locked of the file xe_device.c of the component drm/xe. The manipulation leads to race condition. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-98391. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.6/7.3-rc2. This issue affects the function guc_ct_send_locked of the file xe_device.c of the component drm/xe. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: Guard page-fault worker with runtime PM check During VM teardown, the VM's runtime PM reference is dropped asynchronously, allowing the device to autosuspend while stale page faults belonging to the now-dead VM are still queued. When the page-fault worker later tries to ack one of these, it calls into guc_ct_send_locked() on an already-suspended device, tripping:   Assertion `!xe_pm_runtime_suspended(xe)` failed!   WARNING at xe_device.c:1267 xe_device_assert_mem_access+0x11c/0x140 [xe] A live VM/exec queue always holds a PM reference while it has outstanding work, so if the device is suspended at ack time, the owning context is already gone and the fault is stale. Take a runtime PM reference across the entire pagefault queue worker to safely deliver acks for torn-down VMs. v3: - Move PM ref to the generic xe_pagefault_queue_work using guard(xe_pm_runtime)(xe) instead of tracking it in the GuC backend(Matt Brost). v2: - Hold PM ref across the entire batch (begin/end) instead of per-ack. This prevents the device from autosuspending mid-batch, which would leave write_only acks written but the end flush skipped, and skip counter++, desyncing the cadence check.(Himal) - Add a comment explaining stale faults.(Himal) (cherry picked from commit fcc2431d2213dc4d04250c4f1ae87d9c3ae0d455) [Rodrigo: Added xe_device struct for compatibility while cherry-picking]

It is possible to read the advisory at git.kernel.org. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-98391 since 09/25/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 10/14/2026).

Upgrading to version 7.2.7 or 7.3-rc3 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 25764620ec64c0142e2c87c41787f45540cf09ff/20fce5b34b21a995839743b4917a1edd2fd503ba is able to eliminate this problem. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 7.2.0
• 7.2.1
• 7.2.2
• 7.2.3
• 7.2.4
• 7.2.5
• 7.2.6
• 7.3-rc1
• 7.3-rc2

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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