CVE-2026-53192: ALSA: timer: Fix UAF at snd_timer_user_params()

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2026-06-25 · updated 2026-10-19
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: timer: Fix UAF at snd_timer_user_params() At releasing a timer object, e.g. when a userspace timer (CONFIG_SND_UTIMER) gets closed and snd_timer_free() is called, it tries to detach the timer instances and release the resources. However, it's still possible that other in-flight tasks are holding the timer instance where the to-be-deleted timer object is associated, and this may lead to racy accesses. Fortunately, most of ioctls dealing with the timer instance list already have the protection with register_mutex, and this also avoids such races. But, SNDRV_TIMER_IOCTL_PARAMS isn't protected, hence the concurrent ioctl may lead to use-after-free. This patch just adds the guard with register_mutex to protect snd_timer_user_params() for covering the code path as a quick workaround. It's no hot-path but rather a rarely issued ioctl, so the performance penalty doesn't matter.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.12 before 6.12.94; from 6.13 before 6.18.36; from 6.19 before 7.0.13; 7.1-rc1, 7.1-rc2, 7.1-rc3, 7.1-rc4, 7.1-rc5, 7.1-rc6 (+1) — fixed in 6.12.94, 6.18.36, 7.0.13

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.94, 6.18.36, 7.0.13. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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