HIGH 7.8 NVD
CVE-2026-98116
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: Serialize PCM mmap with buffer reallocation to fix page UAF snd_pcm_hw_params()
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ALSA: pcm: Serialize PCM mmap with buffer reallocation to fix page UAF
snd_pcm_hw_params() and snd_pcm_hw_free() guard buffer reallocation
with an mmap_count check performed under the PCM stream lock, but the
lock is released long before the buffer is actually freed:
snd_pcm_sync_stop(), constraint refinement and do_free_pages() all
happen in between. snd_pcm_mmap_data(), on the other hand, takes no
lock at all: it validates against the old buffer's state and
dma_bytes, remaps its pages into the VMA, and only then increments
mmap_count.
A concurrent mmap() can therefore slip in between the check and the
free. remap_pfn_range() installs writable PTEs for the old buffer's
pages without taking page references, and the subsequent
do_free_pages() returns those pages to the page allocator while the
VMA still maps them. This leaves a stale, writable mapping of freed
pages: a page-level use-after-free that can be leveraged for local
privilege escalation.
Make snd_pcm_mmap_data() participate in the buffer-access scheme
introduced for hw_params/hw_free: acquire runtime->buffer_accessing
before validating and remapping, and release it afterwards. Buffer
reallocation already fails with -EBUSY while accessors are active,
and the mmap side now fails with -EBUSY while a reallocation is in
progress, so the validate/remap sequence and the check/free sequence
can no longer interleave.
A reproducer that turns this race into a stale writable mapping of
the freed DMA buffer pages is available on request.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8c1882dfee8f404d118020664b73eb4592172226
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9b110a9dcecc59516c77cb3c0caf1f492f75df2d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cbc7ec97601d09b74e05e44470fa6b0bcdabf3f5
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fd137bf8149bc6460f9b7b1fc292025da04cb9ee
This high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 7.8 was published on 2026-09-25 via NVD.
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