CVE-2026-46333 – ptrace: slightly saner ‘get_dumpable()’ logic

CVE ID :CVE-2026-46333

Published : May 15, 2026, 12:58 p.m. | 59 minutes ago

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

ptrace: slightly saner ‘get_dumpable()’ logic

The ‘dumpability’ of a task is fundamentally about the memory image of
the task – the concept comes from whether it can core dump or not – and
makes no sense when you don’t have an associated mm.

And almost all users do in fact use it only for the case where the task
has a mm pointer.

But we have one odd special case: ptrace_may_access() uses ‘dumpable’ to
check various other things entirely independently of the MM (typically
explicitly using flags like PTRACE_MODE_READ_FSCREDS). Including for
threads that no longer have a VM (and maybe never did, like most kernel
threads).

It’s not what this flag was designed for, but it is what it is.

The ptrace code does check that the uid/gid matches, so you do have to
be uid-0 to see kernel thread details, but this means that the
traditional “drop capabilities” model doesn’t make any difference for
this all.

Make it all make a *bit* more sense by saying that if you don’t have a
MM pointer, we’ll use a cached “last dumpability” flag if the thread
ever had a MM (it will be zero for kernel threads since it is never
set), and require a proper CAP_SYS_PTRACE capability to override.

Severity: 0.0 | NA

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