CVE-2026-43437

Published: May 9, 2026Last modified: May 9, 2026

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: fix use-after-free on linked stream runtime in snd_pcm_drain() In the drain loop, the local variable 'runtime' is reassigned to a linked stream's runtime (runtime = s->runtime at line 2157). After releasing the stream lock at line 2169, the code accesses runtime->no_period_wakeup, runtime->rate, and runtime->buffer_size (lines 2170-2178) — all referencing the linked stream's runtime without any lock or refcount protecting its lifetime. A concurrent close() on the linked stream's fd triggers snd_pcm_release_substream() → snd_pcm_drop() → pcm_release_private() → snd_pcm_unlink() → snd_pcm_detach_substream() → kfree(runtime). No synchronization prevents kfree(runtime) from completing while the drain path dereferences the stale pointer. Fix by caching the needed runtime fields (no_period_wakeup, rate, buffer_size) into local variables while still holding the stream lock, and using the cached values after the lock is released.

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References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4a758e9a1f5ed722f83c4dd35f867fe811553bcb
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/629cf09464cf98670996ea5c191dc9743e6f3f00
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9b1dbd69ba6f8f8c69bc7b77c2ce3b9c6ed05ba6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9baee36e8c5443411c4629afabafaff8a46a23fd
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ae8f8d30d334bad5b1b3cdb1eb8a0b771f55e432
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c2f64e05a0587a83ec42dbd6b7a7ded79b2ff694
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fc71f888994569f87d5bee20b1ac6c9c1e3a7a79