Medium [CVE-2026-63942] Fix race between port and client registration
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-63942 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: parport: Fix race between port and client registration The parport subsystem registers port devices before they are fully initialised, resulting in a race condition where client drivers such as lp can attach to ports that are not completely initialised or even being torn down.
When the port and client drivers are built as modules and loaded around the same time during boot, this occasionally results in a crash.
I was able to make this happen reliably in a VM with a PC-style parallel port by patching parport_pc to fail probing: > --- a/drivers/parport/parport_pc.c > +++ b/drivers/parport/parport_pc.c > @@ -2069,7 +2069,7 @@ static struct parport *__parport_pc_probe_port(unsigned long int base, > if (!p) > goto out3; > > -base_res = request_region(base, 3, p->name); > +base_res = NULL; > if (!base_res) > goto out4; > and then running: while true; do modprobe lp & modprobe parport_pc wait rmmod lp parport_pc done for a few seconds.
In the long term I think port registration should be changed to put the call to device_add() inside parport_announce_port(), but since the latter currently cannot fail this will require changing all port drivers. For now, add a flag to indicate whether a port has been "announced" and only try to attach client drivers to ports when the flag is set.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 7 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 7 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 7 days ago·verify at source
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