CVE-2026-90129virtio_balloon: quiesce balloon work before device shutdown
- —Not scoredno CVSS score yet
- 0.21%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 89% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: virtio_balloon: quiesce balloon work before device shutdown Commit 8bd2fa086a04 ("virtio: break and reset virtio devices on device_shutdown()") added a generic virtio bus .shutdown handler that breaks and resets every virtio device during device_shutdown(), i.e. on reboot and kexec. virtio_balloon provides no .shutdown of its own, so that generic path runs while the balloon's asynchronous work is still armed. Once the device has been broken, virtqueue_add_inbuf() in virtballoon_free_page_report() returns -EIO and trips its WARN_ON_ONCE(). On a kernel booted with panic_on_warn that turns an ordinary reboot, for example a kexec based upgrade, into a fatal panic in the middle of device_shutdown(), so the machine never reaches the new kernel. Relaxing that single WARN_ON_ONCE() would only hide the symptom: the inflate/deflate and OOM paths do not warn, they call wait_event(vb->acked, ...) and would instead block forever on a broken queue that can no longer complete. The device has to be quiesced, not just kept quiet. Add a .shutdown handler that quiesces the balloon via the shared virtballoon_quiesce() helper while the device is still alive, and only then breaks and resets it via virtio_device_shutdown(). Unlike virtballoon_remove() the balloon workqueue is not destroyed, as shutdown does not free the device and cancel_work_sync() together with stop_update already prevent any further work from being queued.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Linux
- 6 days later
· 6 days later
Published
- 43 days later
· 43 days later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
No CVSS score yet: neither the CNA, CISA nor NVD has scored this CVE. NVD status: Received.
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.21% · top 89% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Not scored.
Affected products
- affected 8bd2fa086a04886798b505f28db4002525895203 – < 6dd28e32f4d81a0d57c732b9900de24184e60a7d
- affected 8bd2fa086a04886798b505f28db4002525895203 – < bdef50a8226fc04899ef6815dd08a002247d47d5
- affected 8bd2fa086a04886798b505f28db4002525895203 – < 7e17eef04600c399c7e0f5ce765da5cf9d40d8e1
- affected 0c03e32494dd0bbcc301523e5ae567c2f567a7d9
- affected acdfe206be6c70ec55dc8bfdb1a22036d10fae26
- affected 1eaa83fd94ed5e40d43139025f5acb7bcfed3b5f
- affected aee42f3d57bfa37b2716df4584edeecf63b9df4c
- affected 6.1.191 – < 6.2
- affected 6.6.160 – < 6.7
- affected 6.12.114 – < 6.13
- affected 6.14.9 – < 6.15
- affected 6.15
- unaffected < 6.15
- unaffected 6.18.52 – ≤ 6.18.*
- unaffected 7.2.6 – ≤ 7.2.*
- unaffected 7.3 – ≤ *
References
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-81722 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
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[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-90129)Record last updated .