CVE-2024-26998

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel - NULL Pointer Dereference in Serial Core Circular Buffer Handling

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: serial: core: Clearing the circular buffer before NULLifying it The circular buffer is NULLified in uart_tty_port_shutdown() under the spin lock. However, the PM or other timer based callbacks may still trigger after this event without knowning that buffer pointer is not valid. Since the serial code is a bit inconsistent in checking the buffer state (some rely on the head-tail positions, some on the buffer pointer), it's better to have both aligned, i.e. buffer pointer to be NULL and head-tail possitions to be the same, meaning it's empty. This will prevent asynchronous calls to dereference NULL pointer as reported recently in 8250 case: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000cf5 Workqueue: pm pm_runtime_work EIP: serial8250_tx_chars (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1809) ... ? serial8250_tx_chars (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1809) __start_tx (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1551) serial8250_start_tx (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1654) serial_port_runtime_suspend (include/linux/serial_core.h:667 drivers/tty/serial/serial_port.c:63) __rpm_callback (drivers/base/power/runtime.c:393) ? serial_port_remove (drivers/tty/serial/serial_port.c:50) rpm_suspend (drivers/base/power/runtime.c:447) The proposed change will prevent ->start_tx() to be called during suspend on shut down port.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0023
EPSS Percentile 13.5%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-476
Status published
Products (13)
Linux/Linux < 6.8
Linux/Linux 43066e32227ecde674e8ae1fcdd4a1ede67680c2 - 9cf7ea2eeb745213dc2a04103e426b960e807940
Linux/Linux 43066e32227ecde674e8ae1fcdd4a1ede67680c2 - bb1118905e875c111d7ccef9aee86ac5e4e7f985
Linux/Linux 434beb66368d4fb4d3119c2116b9398500adbf47 - 7ae7104d54342433a3a73975f6569beefdd86350
Linux/Linux 6.6.24 - 6.6.29
Linux/Linux 6.6.29 - 6.6.*
Linux/Linux 6.7.12 - 6.8
Linux/Linux 6.8
Linux/Linux 6.8.8 - 6.8.*
Linux/Linux 6.9
... and 3 more
Published May 01, 2024
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026