Bug 2536292 (CVE-2026-93050)

Summary: CVE-2026-93050 kernel: ipack: ipoctal: fix UAF, null-ptr-deref, and use-after-free in cleanup on remove
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's `ipack: ipoctal` module. This vulnerability arises from improper memory handling, specifically Use-After-Free (UAF) conditions and a NULL pointer dereference, when the device is removed while a terminal (tty) session is still active. A local attacker could exploit these issues to cause system instability or a denial of service by crashing the system.
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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 2026-09-17 17:16:41 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ipack: ipoctal: fix UAF, null-ptr-deref, and use-after-free in cleanup on remove

Three issues arise when the device is removed while a tty session is
still active:

1. UAF of struct ipoctal: the remove callback frees ipoctal via
   kfree() while tty ops may still access it.  Fix by introducing
   kref-based lifetime management — kref is taken in install() when
   a tty is opened and released in cleanup() when the tty is finally
   destroyed; remove() uses kref_put() instead of kfree().

2. NULL dereference in ipoctal_write_tty(): __ipoctal_remove()
   frees xmit_buf via tty_port_free_xmit_buf() while a userspace
   process may still hold the tty fd and call write().  Fix by
   checking for NULL xmit_buf in ipoctal_write_tty().

3. UAF in ipoctal_cleanup(): ipack_put_carrier(ipoctal->dev)
   dereferences ipoctal->dev after the ipack_device has been freed
   by ipack_device_del().  Fix by caching ipoctal->carrier_owner
   during probe() and calling module_put() on the cached pointer
   directly in cleanup(), avoiding any access to ipoctal->dev.

Also introduce a "removed" flag in struct ipoctal, set at the start
of __ipoctal_remove(), and checked in every tty op that accesses
hardware resources (port_activate, write_tty, set_termios, hangup,
shutdown).  This prevents page faults when devm_ioremap() regions
are unmapped after remove() returns.