Bug 2517071 (CVE-2026-74461)

Summary: CVE-2026-74461 kernel: i2c: imx: Cancel hrtimer before clearing slave pointer
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
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel, specifically within the i2c: imx driver. This vulnerability occurs due to a timing issue during device unregistration, where a critical pointer is cleared before a related timer is properly canceled. If a pending interrupt triggers the timer after the pointer is cleared, it results in a NULL pointer dereference. This can lead to a system crash, potentially allowing a local attacker to cause a denial of service.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 12:48:11 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

i2c: imx: Cancel hrtimer before clearing slave pointer

In i2c_imx_unreg_slave(), the slave pointer is set to NULL after
disabling interrupts.  However, a pending interrupt might already
have started the hrtimer (i2c_imx_slave_timeout) before the pointer
was cleared.  If the hrtimer fires after i2c_imx->slave is set to
NULL, the timer callback i2c_imx_slave_finish_op() will call
i2c_imx_slave_event() with a NULL slave pointer, which results in a
use-after-free / NULL pointer dereference.

Fix by canceling the hrtimer and waiting for it to complete after
disabling interrupts, before clearing the slave pointer.
Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-08-19 15:29:04 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026081532-CVE-2026-74461-5a10@gregkh/T