CVE-2026-98116

HIGH
MEDIUM Priority: 0.01 BB Relevance: 41/100
Published: 2026-09-25 Modified: 2026-10-28 First seen: 2026-10-29 Status: active

Attack Surface

Low Complexity No Interaction Conf. Impact Integ. Impact

CVSS Vector Breakdown

AV: Local
AC: Low
PR: Low
UI: None
S: Unchanged
C: High
I: High
A: High

Description

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.

Weakness Classification (1)

Affected Software (2)

VendorProductVersion
linux linux_kernel 4.14.279 – 4.15
linux linux_kernel 7.3

Bug Bounty Relevance

41 / 100
✓ Low complexity
✓ No user interaction

CVSS Score

7.8 / 10.0 v3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS — Exploitation Probability

0.13%
Raw Score 0.001260
Percentile 2.3%
Date 2026-10-29

EPSS Trend

2026-10-29
0.00126
2026-10-28
0.00126

Intelligence Sources

nvd ref →