Executive brief
A vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's sound driver for certain PCI audio hardware. Under specific low-memory conditions, the system may attempt to access invalid memory locations, potentially causing a system crash or instability. This affects users with specific audio hardware drivers (ice1712, ice1724, and aureon) enabled in their kernel.
Technical details
A vulnerability in the ALSA ice1712 driver (including ice1724 and aureon components) stems from a failure to validate the return value of the snd_ctl_new1() function. This function can return a NULL pointer if a memory allocation fails. Because the driver subsequently dereferences this pointer without a check, a NULL pointer dereference occurs. This is a local vulnerability that requires the system to be in a state of memory exhaustion to trigger the specific code path. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches to add the necessary NULL checks and return -ENOMEM on failure.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.1.34 to 6.1.178, 6.3.8 to 6.4, 6.4 and later versions prior to fix
Timeline
- 2026-05-27: other: Patch authored
- 2026-07-25: advisory: CVE published
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2b929b91b0f3bc6de8a844370049cd99ee8e31ff
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/38a7cc46370a57122fb29c4bfe48a851c0c64459
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/57d59be545b309d4bb54ac472b15d1e67f254d95
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/69bf1dfa3215524c4ae255bb9dce0770875abbeb
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/71b87108ad93d433cdb20704a8dc8852304cf2c2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d34ad480b8896d2b486e2cf29ce1790326cad205