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CVE-2026-97481: serial: 8250: fix possible ISR soft lockup

• Severity: unknown
• 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: 2026-09-24 · updated 2026-10-03

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: serial: 8250: fix possible ISR soft lockup There are rare cases in which the host gets stuck in the ISR because it is flooded with messages during the startup phase. The reason for the soft lockup in the ISR is the missing FIFO error IRQ (FIFOE) handling. Not handling it and reporting IRQ_HANDLED triggers the IRQ immediately again. Fix this by adding a check for the FIFOE status and clearing the FIFO if no data is ready (DR). This behavior was observed on an AM62L device which uses the OMAP 8250 driver. Fix it for all 8250 drivers, since the OMAP driver's special IRQ setup handling may trigger this behavior more frequently, but it is not ensured that other 8250 drivers aren't affected.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 2.6.12 — fixed in 7.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/03ed804a0ddc3d069faf94c47f9e702afe5ca084
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0c6bf45e5a345cc3b9ffbeaf9083ecac3c2293eb
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2881b2e6da02daea1eb8254247ba8fd20c9d3348
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4295c58990b7a84e8349a2226db692e252825b60
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4bce4a6f6318035d77d6b6199527b1950bb015f4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8b67af8cd90542b2607623e3282811849e191b79
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/95d0b40c0623fd2b58c753f8dd6adda7263e3cd1

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