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Advisory severityHigh7.3Red Hat Linux

High [CVE-2026-68201] drain a slave's callback before its master detaches it

This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-68201 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat package: kernel-rt.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2026-68201 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

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Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: timer: drain a slave's callback before its master detaches it snd_timer_close_locked() drains the closing instance's own in-flight callback (IFLG_CALLBACK) before freeing it, but not its slaves'.

When a master instance is closed, remove_slave_links() clears each slave's ->timer; the slave's own close then reads timer == NULL and takes the branch that skips the drain entirely (snd_timer_stop_slave() also no-ops on a NULL timer).

So a slave whose callback is still running when the master is closed is freed underneath the live callback, leading to use-after-free. Drain the slaves too before remove_slave_links() severs them. snd_timer_stop() has already taken this instance off the active list, so no new slave callback can be queued.

Take the slaves off the ack list so a pending one can't fire either, then wait for any that is already in flight. A flaw was found in the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) timer component of the Linux kernel.

When a master timer instance is closed, it does not properly ensure that all associated slave timer callbacks have finished executing before detaching them. This oversight can lead to a use-after-free vulnerability, where a freed memory region is accessed, potentially causing system instability, crashes, or allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Affected versions

No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 20 hours ago·verify at source

Fixed versions
  • kernel-0:6.12.0-211.59.1.el10_2
  • kernel-0:5.14.0-687.51.1.el9_8
  • RHSA-2026:71233
  • RHSA-2026:71232

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 20 hours ago·verify at source

Mitigation checklist

Recommended fix / mitigation
  • Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 20 hours ago·verify at source

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