Bug 2536701 (CVE-2026-90207)

Summary: CVE-2026-90207 kernel: ALSA: seq: midi: Serialize input teardown with event_input
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: 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 Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) MIDI sequencer component of the Linux kernel. A race condition can occur during the teardown of a rawmidi substream while input events are being processed. This can lead to a null pointer dereference, allowing a local attacker to cause a denial of service by crashing the kernel.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-17 19:09:24 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ALSA: seq: midi: Serialize input teardown with event_input

snd_midi_input_event() must not be running while a rawmidi substream is
closing, since this can lead to the trigger state becoming out-of-step
through this sequence in snd_rawmidi_input_trigger():

	snd_rawmidi_input_trigger(up=0)
					snd_midi_input_event()
					 -> snd_rawmidi_kernel_read()
					     -> snd_rawmidi_input_trigger(up=1)
	  -> cancel_work_sync()

which ends with the underlying device being active unexpectedly.

When this is called from close_substream(), further input can re-trigger
the input event leaving it running after rawmidi_release_priv() has set
rfile->rmidi to NULL which leads to:

	Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000000000b0
	Call trace:
	 snd_midi_input_event+0x3c/0x134 [snd_seq_midi] (P)
	 snd_rawmidi_input_event_work+0x1c/0x2c
	 process_one_work+0x150/0x3a4
	 worker_thread+0x190/0x318

Apply a similar approach to commit ef7607ab1c8ad ("ALSA: seq: midi:
Serialize output teardown with event_input") which fixed the same issue
in the output direction, but updated to use RCU following Takashi Iwai's
proposed follow-on patch [1].

With this change in place, midisynth_unsubscribe() clears the input file
so snd_midi_input_event() will not re-trigger the stream and will be
quiesced by the cancel_work_sync() in snd_rawmidi_input_trigger().

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-sound/20260813144224.753399-1-tiwai@suse.de/