High · published August 28, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ALSA: pcm: wake linked drain waiters on unlink
snd_pcm_drain() on a linked stream parks an on-stack wait entry on the
drained peer's runtime->sleep, and after schedule_timeout() removes it
only if that peer is still found in the caller's group. If group
membership changes during the wait and the sleep ends by signal or
timeout (so autoremove_wake_function() does not run), finish_wait() is
skipped and snd_pcm_drain() returns with the entry still queued on that
stream's sleep list; a later wake_up() then walks a freed stack frame.
This is reachable by unlinking either the drained or the draining stream.
Unlike the close path (snd_pcm_drop() -> snd_pcm_post_stop()),
snd_pcm_unlink() never wakes the sleep queues. Wake every group member
under the group lock before the membership change, so a linked drainer is
released and drops its entry while the streams are still grouped.
The window was opened when snd_pcm_link_rwsem stopped being held across
the wait and the removal became conditional on group membership (see
Fixes). The later switch to finish_wait() kept that conditional removal,
so the signal/timeout case remained.