Bug 2536517 (CVE-2026-93053)

Summary: CVE-2026-93053 kernel: speakup: keyhelp: guard letter_offsets possible out-of-range indexing
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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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's speakup component. A local attacker with root privileges could exploit a vulnerability in the keyhelp module by overriding function names in sysfs. This manipulation could cause an out-of-bounds write in the letter_offsets array, potentially leading to system instability or unexpected behavior.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-17 18:16:04 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

speakup: keyhelp: guard letter_offsets possible out-of-range indexing

help_init() builds letter_offsets[] by using the first byte of each
function name as an index via `(start & 31) - 1`. If function_names are
overridden from sysfs (root) with a name starting outside [a–z], the
index underflows or exceeds the array, leading to OOB write.

Function names can be overridden with the following commands as root:

    modprobe speakup_soft
    echo "0 _bad" > /sys/accessibility/speakup/i18n/function_names
    # then press Insert+2 on /dev/tty

This fix checks the first letter in help_init(), and if it is not in the
[a–z] range the function returns an error to the caller. Eventually this
error is propagated to drivers/accessibility/speakup/main.c:2217, which
causes a bleep sound.