What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-90032: media: usbtv: keep device alive while ALSA card exists

• 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: 2026-09-16 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: media: usbtv: keep device alive while ALSA card exists The ALSA PCM callbacks store the driver state in pcm->private_data. An open PCM file can outlive USB disconnect because usbtv_audio_free() uses snd_card_free_when_closed(). The disconnect path can then drop the V4L2 device reference and free struct usbtv before ALSA releases the substream, so a later close dereferences freed memory in snd_usbtv_pcm_close(). Take a V4L2 device reference for the ALSA card and drop it from the card private_free callback. This keeps struct usbtv valid until ALSA has closed the remaining files and freed the card.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 3.18 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1618257cb0aba4ce342ae8c0228368c24161f5fb
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/239d1683e08b2aee2a15ef35706e1ea9a76681d8
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/503be26ff888cb3576e55d251895d290e8146f27
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/67374e3a00814dcdd46e9feca61f69f7f2d81957
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7690a86b193271322cd31ab77349a87aa10858e4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/97b5e8b22b98e287481a97a9a4cfebbb348738a5
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be0f7745f883386e5263b4e475686a81dfa87175
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fc530fe168bb2b745a93f553ad21fc25fd9cba3d

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