What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-38388: ALSA: hda/cs_dsp_ctl: Use private_free for control cleanup

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2024-06-21 · updated 2026-08-04
• Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: hda/cs_dsp_ctl: Use private_free for control cleanup Use the control private_free callback to free the associated data block. This ensures that the memory won't leak, whatever way the control gets destroyed. The original implementation didn't actually remove the ALSA controls in hda_cs_dsp_control_remove(). It only freed the internal tracking structure. This meant it was possible to remove/unload the amp driver while leaving its ALSA controls still present in the soundcard. Obviously attempting to access them could cause segfaults or at least dereferencing stale pointers.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 6.0 before 6.1.93; from 6.2 before 6.6.33; from 6.7 before 6.9.4 — fixed in 6.1.93, 6.6.33, 6.9.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.93, 6.6.33, 6.9.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/172811e3a557d8681a5e2d0f871dc04a2d17eb13
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/191dc1b2ff0fb35e7aff15a53224837637df8bff
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3291486af5636540980ea55bae985f3eaa5b0740
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6e359be4975006ff72818e79dad8fe48293f2eb2
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/172811e3a557d8681a5e2d0f871dc04a2d17eb13
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/191dc1b2ff0fb35e7aff15a53224837637df8bff
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3291486af5636540980ea55bae985f3eaa5b0740
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6e359be4975006ff72818e79dad8fe48293f2eb2

Get alerted when CVE-2024-38388 or the next vulnerability affects your stack