CVE-2026-45968: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available On certain platforms (PowerNV systems without a power-mgt DT node), cpuidle may register only a single idle state. In cases where that single state is a polling state (state 0), the ladder governor may incorrectly treat state 1 as the first usable state and pass an out-of-bounds index. This can lead to a NULL enter callback being invoked, ultimately resulting in a system crash. [ 13.342636] cpuidle-powernv : Only Snooze is available [ 13.351854] Faulting instruction address: 0x00000000 [ 13.376489] NIP [0000000000000000] 0x0 [ 13.378351] LR [c000000001e01974] cpuidle_enter_state+0x2c4/0x668 Fix this by adding a bail-out in cpuidle_select() that returns state 0 directly when state_count <= 1, bypassing the governor and keeping the tick running.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 4.14, before 5.10.252 (fixed in 5.10.252); from 5.11, before 5.15.202 (fixed in 5.15.202); from 5.16, before 6.1.165 (fixed in 6.1.165); from 6.2, before 6.6.128 (fixed in 6.6.128); from 6.7, before 6.12.75 (fixed in 6.12.75); from 6.13, before 6.18.14 (fixed in 6.18.14); …

Published 2026-05-27. Last modified 2026-06-17.