What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-97969: watchdog: msc313e: Fix clock leak and spurious timer in settimeout()

• 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: 2026-09-25 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: watchdog: msc313e: Fix clock leak and spurious timer in settimeout() msc313e_wdt_settimeout() unconditionally calls msc313e_wdt_start() which introduces two severe bugs: 1. If the watchdog is already active, calling start() again will increase the reference count of the clock again. However stop() is only called once, the reference count is unbalance. 2. If the watchdog is stopped, calling settimeout() will start the hardware timer accidentally. Factor out the register-writing logic into a helper function. Only call it in settimeout() if the watchdog is running. Otherwise, simply update `wdev->timeout`.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 5.14 — 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/2152a13ee2a9af09a668ebd053a8dbf771dadb80
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2abf99a57b0b71b2b97745981f4039370ab78044
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3db30f315935c2fb0d95f46b7a593b5b4d3ec3d0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/68665016c7b777b44e27b6b0c1e6524c28ebe40a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/77ef2aa8b46876ca9935f32dd874c517ccf5d880
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1dd0817776ea2a870ba2347001af13ddd4cb321
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/faf1eb2895c87a8c0fb920439dddc7e0d97c6a69

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