Bug 2502323 (CVE-2026-63942)

Summary: CVE-2026-63942 kernel: parport: Fix race between port and client registration
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's parallel port (parport) subsystem. This vulnerability is caused by a race condition where parallel port devices are registered before they are fully initialized. This allows client drivers to interact with uninitialized or unstable ports, which can lead to a system crash. A local attacker could exploit this by repeatedly loading and unloading parallel port modules, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-19 16:01:54 UTC
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.