CVE-2026-98836: ALSA: line6: reject oversized playback packets

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: ALSA: line6: reject oversized playback packets Each playback URB is handed a slice of out.buffer that is exactly LINE6_ISO_PACKETS * max_packet_size_out bytes, sized from the OUT endpoint, but the number of bytes written into that slice is never compared against it. submit_audio_out_urb() takes the frame count from prev_fsize, which audio_in_callback() derived from the *IN* endpoint's received packet length, and rescales it with the playback frame size; when prev_fsize is still zero it synthesizes a length from the sample rate instead. On a device declaring a large IN wMaxPacketSize and a small OUT wMaxPacketSize, the resulting memcpy(), or the memset() when the playback stream is idle, runs past its slice and, as the reproducer below shows, beyond the allocation. usb_submit_urb() is not a backstop. max_packet_size_out comes from usb_maxpacket(), which returns only the low 11 bits of wMaxPacketSize, while USB core validates a high-speed isochronous length against that base scaled by usb_endpoint_maxp_mult(). A length of up to three times the allocated slice is therefore accepted, and even a rejected URB is only rejected after the write. Reject a packet that does not fit the slice the driver allocated for it. Clamping it instead would silently shorten the capture-derived rate feedback and desynchronize the two streams. BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in submit_audio_out_urb (sound/usb/line6/playback.c:229) Write of size 1024 at addr ffff888100bbd400 by task kworker/1:2/5002 Workqueue: events line6_startup_work Call Trace: __asan_memcpy (mm/kasan/shadow.c:106) submit_audio_out_urb (sound/usb/line6/playback.c:229) line6_submit_audio_out_all_urbs (sound/usb/line6/playback.c:291) line6_stream_start (sound/usb/line6/pcm.c:194) line6_pcm_acquire (sound/usb/line6/pcm.c:337) line6_startup_work (sound/usb/line6/driver.c:728) process_one_work (kernel/workqueue.c:3396) worker_thread (kernel/workqueue.c:3479 kernel/workqueue.c:3560) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:436) ret_from_fork (arch/x86/kernel/process.c:158) ret_from_fork_asm (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:245) The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff888100bbd400 which belongs to the cache kmalloc-256 of size 256 The buggy address is located 0 bytes inside of allocated 256-byte region [ffff888100bbd400, ffff888100bbd500)

Affected products

Linux: 4.9 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

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

References

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