What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-98696: USB: serial: fix driver deregistration order

• 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: 2026-10-18 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: USB: serial: fix driver deregistration order USB serial driver modules register one driver for the USB bus and one or more drivers for the ports on the USB serial bus. When unloading a driver module, the USB driver must be deregistered before the USB serial bus drivers so that I/O is stopped before unbinding the ports to avoid use-after-free in completion handlers accessing port data. Note that the "new_id" attributes must first be removed to prevent new ids from being added and triggering a probe of the USB driver after it has been deregistered.

Affected products

• Linux: 3.4 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

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

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2f12343f39e316ff66adc84a6db3569f33b50f66
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/428d479a0d31460fbf5969ab262ccd673f1fac01
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/646e5b28b4fdbc1b828a2398d6ced2c1dd308a46
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7c65438e3b98bd6009af09db8c725547192cdfe0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/991904982827f07706c643bb0428c4b689b254e3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9b085a06a0a411b0bcdf18b61c3ebf1be1c72ffe
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1aa474768f69ea3a70da523f00f74c264cfa10e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e7ad832b1144df19cbbaaa655625c6f984e85b9f

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