Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's audio driver for Conexant hardware could cause the system to crash. This occurs when the system fails to properly handle audio jack detection during startup, particularly under low-memory conditions. An exploit could lead to a complete system outage (denial of service).
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the ALSA hda/conexant driver within the cx_probe() function (or patch_conexant_auto() in some versions). The driver fails to validate the return value of snd_hda_jack_detect_enable_callback() using IS_ERR(). If this function fails—typically due to memory allocation failure—the driver continues execution with an uninitialized or invalid callback structure. This leads to a kernel NULL pointer dereference or similar memory corruption when the driver later attempts to process jack events. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches to implement proper error propagation.
Affected products
- Linux Linux kernel 5.15.149 to 5.15.209, 6.1.77 to 6.1.175, 6.6.16 to 6.6.141, 6.7.4 to 6.8
Timeline
- 2026-04-28: other: Initial patch authored
- 2026-06-26: advisory: CVE published
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1da5c73f3793b224696617a2a21def7500ba18d6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/49c2c5924552e1d2f8b635dee663abebbb7cf63b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a2a33e87a2ffce3046c574d24eec4390c27c9365
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b0e2333a231107adedd38c6fcfe1adc6162716fc
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d68f753d89f4ef6e410d7e8b7e8ab2fdde921b80
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/dd110cc00cf854a8ecd8d003127a4178c28574ea
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f837c7b85143a7c54140ff41ad5c076b73cd9933