CVE-2026-31481

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Drain deferred trigger frees if kthread creation fails Boot-time trigger registration can fail before the trigger-data cleanup kthread exists. Deferring those frees until late init is fine, but the post-boot fallback must still drain the deferred list if kthread creation never succeeds. Otherwise, boot-deferred nodes can accumulate on trigger_data_free_list, later frees fall back to synchronously freeing only the current object, and the older queued entries are leaked forever. To trigger this, add the following to the kernel command line: trace_event=sched_switch trace_trigger=sched_switch.traceon,sched_switch.traceon The second traceon trigger will fail and be freed. This triggers a NULL pointer dereference and crashes the kernel. Keep the deferred boot-time behavior, but when kthread creation fails, drain the whole queued list synchronously. Do the same in the late-init drain path so queued entries are not stranded there either.

Published: 2026-04-22 Last update: 2026-04-23 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-31481 is rated Low Risk (4.9/100): low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). Mandatory action: Low composite risk—no urgent action required; patch on your normal maintenance cycle and revisit priority if CVSS or EPSS increases.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-31481

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-04-23 0.02%

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-31481

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

No CVSS data in dataset for this CVE.

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-31481

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2026-31481

GHSA-vx7w-47r6-wxw3 · Severity: medium — In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tracing: Drain deferred...

OS Trackers for CVE-2026-31481

vendor priority summary link
debian unimportant CVE-2026-31481 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-31481
redhat https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-31481
suse https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-31481/
ubuntu medium CVE-2026-31481 medium priority: Ubuntu including 161 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1449 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, resolute, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1048, ignored 169, not-affected 145, released 83, needs-triage 4. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-31481

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-31481

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
No affected products in dataset.

References for CVE-2026-31481

cvelogic Threat Intelligence