CVE-2026-98552 — perf/core: Fix a refcount leak in attach_perf_ctx_data()

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

perf/core: Fix a refcount leak in attach_perf_ctx_data()

The attach_perf_ctx_data() can race on global and !global cases. The global case is protected by global_ctx_data_rwsem and shares a single reference count using perf_ctx_data.global field.

But when it races with !global case, it may miss to set the global field and result in a reference count leak.

CPU1 CPU2 ---------------------------------------------------------------- attach_task_ctx_data(.global=1) attach_task_ctx_data(.global=0) cd1 = alloc_perf_ctx_data(); cd2 = alloc_perf_ctx_data(); // { .global = 0, .refcount = 1 };

try_cmpxchg(); // success, // task->perf_ctx_data = cd2 try_cmpxhg(); // fail; old = cd2 refcount_inc_not_zero(&old->refcount); // success // old.refcount = 2 free_perf_ctx_data(cd1);

Then later detach_global_ctx_data() will see the data but it's not marked as global, so it won't call detach_task_ctx_data().

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CVE-2026-98552 — perf/core: Fix a refcount leak in attach_perf_ctx_data()