CVE-2026-43327: USB: dummy-hcd: Fix locking/synchronization error

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-667

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: USB: dummy-hcd: Fix locking/synchronization error Syzbot testing was able to provoke an addressing exception and crash in the usb_gadget_udc_reset() routine in drivers/usb/gadgets/udc/core.c, resulting from the fact that the routine was called with a second ("driver") argument of NULL. The bad caller was set_link_state() in dummy_hcd.c, and the problem arose because of a race between a USB reset and driver unbind. These sorts of races were not supposed to be possible; commit 7dbd8f4cabd9 ("USB: dummy-hcd: Fix erroneous synchronization change"), along with a few followup commits, was written specifically to prevent them. As it turns out, there are (at least) two errors remaining in the code. Another patch will address the second error; this one is concerned with the first. The error responsible for the syzbot crash occurred because the stop_activity() routine will sometimes drop and then re-acquire the dum->lock spinlock. A call to stop_activity() occurs in set_link_state() when handling an emulated USB reset, after the test of dum->ints_enabled and before the increment of dum->callback_usage. This allowed another thread (doing a driver unbind) to sneak in and grab the spinlock, and then clear dum->ints_enabled and dum->driver. Normally this other thread would have to wait for dum->callback_usage to go down to 0 before it would clear dum->driver, but in this case it didn't have to wait since dum->callback_usage had not yet been incremented. The fix is to increment dum->callback_usage _before_ calling stop_activity() instead of after. Then the thread doing the unbind will not clear dum->driver until after the call to usb_gadget_udc_reset() safely returns and dum->callback_usage has been decremented again.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 3.2.97 before 3.3; from 3.16.52 before 3.17; from 4.1.46 before 4.2; from 4.4.92 before 4.5; from 4.9.55 before 4.10; from 4.14 before 5.10.253 — fixed in 3.17, 3.3, 4.10, 4.2, 4.5, 5.10.253

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 3.17, 3.3, 4.10, 4.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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