Bug 2554891 (CVE-2026-98483)

Summary: CVE-2026-98483 kernel: nfc: fix use-after-free in nfc_get_local_general_bytes
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 Linux kernel's Near Field Communication (NFC) subsystem. A reference counting error in the nfc_get_local_general_bytes() function causes memory to be freed prematurely while callers still access the returned pointer. A local attacker could exploit this use-after-free vulnerability during NFC operations to cause a denial of service (DoS) or potentially execute arbitrary code.
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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 2026-10-18 15:25:55 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

nfc: fix use-after-free in nfc_get_local_general_bytes

Commit 6709d4b7bc2e ("net: nfc: Fix use-after-free caused by
nfc_llcp_find_local") attempted to fix a use-after-free (UAF) issue by
invoking nfc_llcp_local_put(local) after accessing local->gb. However,
if the reference count drops to zero, local is freed immediately,
leading to a use-after-free when callers access the returned pointer.
Alternative approaches using dynamic allocation (e.g. kmemdup) introduced
memory leaks because callers consistently treat the returned pointer as
borrowed memory.

Fix this properly by refactoring nfc_llcp_general_bytes() and
nfc_get_local_general_bytes() to accept a caller-provided output buffer
(out_gb) and its maximum length (gb_max_len). The general bytes are
safely copied into out_gb before calling nfc_llcp_local_put(local),
ensuring safe lifetime management without ownership transfer complications.

Update all callers across drivers (microread, pn533, pn544, st21nfca,
digital_dep, and nci) to provide their own destination buffers and pass
them to nfc_get_local_general_bytes().