published August 10, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
media: rtl2832: fix use-after-free in rtl2832_remove()
cancel_delayed_work_sync() is called before i2c_mux_del_adapters()
in rtl2832_remove(). While the cancel waits for any running instance
of i2c_gate_work to finish, it does not prevent the timer from being
rescheduled by a concurrent thread.
During probe, the r820t_attach() call attempts I2C transfers through
the mux adapter. These transfers go through i2c_mux_master_xfer(),
which calls rtl2832_deselect() after the transfer completes,
rescheduling i2c_gate_work via schedule_delayed_work(). If this
transfer is still in flight when rtl2832_remove() runs,
rtl2832_deselect() can reschedule i2c_gate_work after it has been
cancelled, causing a use-after-free when kfree(dev) is called.
Fix this by calling i2c_mux_del_adapters() before
cancel_delayed_work_sync(). Once the mux adapter is unregistered, no
new I2C transfers can go through it, so rtl2832_deselect() can no
longer reschedule i2c_gate_work. The subsequent
cancel_delayed_work_sync() is then guaranteed to be final.