Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-89803 · published 16 September 2026
CVE-2026-89803: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/nouveau: unsubscribe the channel-kill…
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/nouveau: unsubscribe the channel-kill event before the fence context nouveau_channel_del() tears the fence context down first and only drops the channel-kill subscription later, in the middle of the nvif object teardown: if (chan->fence) nouveau_fence(chan->cli->drm)->context_del(chan); ... nvif_object_dtor(&chan->vram); nvif_event_dtor(&chan->kill); The subscribed handler is nouveau_channel_killed(), which calls nouveau_channel_kill() and from there nouveau_fence_context_kill() on chan->fence. A kill event delivered in that window takes fctx->lock and walks fctx->pending on a fence context that context_del() has already freed. Nothing reaches this below Fermi today, because the subscription is gated on FERMI_CHANNEL_GPFIFO and nothing kills a channel there. On Fermi and newer the window is real but narrow, since a kill has to land exactly while the channel is being destroyed. That is reason enough on its own, which is why this carries a Fixes: tag. The last patch in this series subscribes Tesla channels as well; nothing kills those today, so it does not widen the exposure now, but it is the groundwork for a recovery path that would, and the ordering is better fixed before that lands than alongside it. Drop the subscription before anything it depends on is torn down.
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/nouveau: unsubscribe the channel-kill event before the fence context nouveau_channel_del() tears the fence context down first and only drops the channel-kill subscription later, in the middle of the nvif object teardown: if (chan->fence) nouveau_fence(chan->cli->drm)->context_del(chan); ... nvif_object_dtor(&chan->vram); nvif_event_dtor(&chan->kill); The subscribed handler is nouveau_channel_killed(), which calls nouveau_channel_kill() and from there nouveau_fence_context_kill() on chan->fence. A kill event delivered in that window takes fctx->lock and walks fctx->pending on a fence context that context_del() has already freed. Nothing reaches this below Fermi today, because the subscription is gated on FERMI_CHANNEL_GPFIFO and nothing kills a channel there. On Fermi and newer the window is real but narrow, since a kill has to land exactly while the channel is being destroyed. That is reason enough on its own, which is why this carries a Fixes: tag. The last patch in this series subscribes Tesla channels as well; nothing kills those today, so it does not widen the exposure now, but it is the groundwork for a recovery path that would, and the ordering is better fixed before that lands than alongside it. Drop the subscription before anything it depends on is torn down.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
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Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-89803), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
