Bug 2482529 (CVE-2026-46118)

Summary: CVE-2026-46118 kernel: pseries/papr-hvpipe: Fix null ptr deref in papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's `pseries/papr-hvpipe` component. A local user could trigger a null pointer dereference in the `papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle()` function. This occurs when `src_info` is improperly re-used after being nulled, leading to a kernel panic. This vulnerability could result in a Denial of Service (DoS) for the affected system.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-05-28 11:01:49 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

pseries/papr-hvpipe: Fix null ptr deref in papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle()

commit 6d3789d347a7 ("papr-hvpipe: convert papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle() to FD_PREPARE()"),
changed the create handle to FD_PREPARE(), but it caused kernel
null-ptr-deref because after call to retain_and_null_ptr(src_info),
src_info is re-used for adding it to the global list.

Getting the following kernel panic in papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle()
when trying to add src_info to the list.
 Kernel attempted to write user page (0) - exploit attempt? (uid: 0)
 BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference on write at 0x00000000
 Faulting instruction address: 0xc0000000001b44a0
 Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1]
 ...
 Call Trace:
 papr_hvpipe_dev_ioctl+0x1f4/0x48c (unreliable)
 sys_ioctl+0x528/0x1064
 system_call_exception+0x128/0x360
 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

Now, the error handling with FD_PREPARE's file cleanup and __free(kfree) auto
cleanup is getting too convoluted. This is mainly because we need to
ensure only 1 user get the srcID handle. To simplify this, we allocate
prepare the src_info in the beginning and add it to the global list
under a spinlock after checking that no duplicates exist.

This simplify the error handling where if the FD_ADD fails, we can
simply remove the src_info from the list and consume any pending msg in
hvpipe to be cleared, after src_info became visible in the global list.