Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-31481 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203); ranked at the 3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-24841
Vulnerability Data
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…
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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.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.