Executive brief
A vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's ALSA sound driver for ES1938 devices. Under specific low-memory conditions, the system could experience a crash (NULL pointer dereference) when initializing the audio mixer. This primarily impacts system stability and availability for users with this specific hardware.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the sound/pci/es1938.c component of the Linux kernel. The function snd_es1938_mixer() calls snd_ctl_new1() to create new control instances but fails to validate the return value. If snd_ctl_new1() returns NULL due to a memory allocation failure, the subsequent dereference of the pointer leads to a kernel panic (NULL pointer dereference). This is a local vulnerability requiring the ability to trigger mixer initialization, typically during driver loading or hardware configuration. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches to add the necessary NULL checks.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 2.6.12 to 5.10.261, 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.145
Timeline
- 2026-05-27: other: Patch authored
- 2026-07-25: advisory: CVE published
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1949163dee39e0e4a1468f37dd7302962f6af45a
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1edd1f02dddd20aeb6066ded41017615766ea42f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41759affbcfe3d51a32900da9547a1ffd744a85f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6c4efebaf73e217efbd08cdbda805758a7db3680
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7531a37720c2545a480fd0fa464978569bf9d6a2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/96cad5bd7d0a176db3fdc06717a41271247336bd
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9e53e99b6fa3cd82992d963cbff58dbbd1df8651