CVE-2026-98116

CVE-2026-98116

High · published September 25, 2026

CVSS v3.1
7.8
EPSS
0%
Percentile
2.1
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.8 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00126 · 2.1th percentile
Published
2026-09-25T15:17Z
References (7)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 27 SEP 03:28Z
    EPSS moved — → 0%
    epss
  • 25 SEP 10:36Z
    ALSA: pcm: Serialize PCM mmap with buffer reallocation to fix page UAF
    cvelistv5