Bug 2555081 (CVE-2026-98741)

Summary:	CVE-2026-98741 kernel: ALSA: ua101: reject mismatched capture/playback packet sizes
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	unspecified	CC:	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
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:	A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) UA-101 USB audio driver. The driver does not validate that packet sizes and channel numbers match between capture and playback endpoints during device initialization. An attacker who connects a specially crafted USB device can trigger an out-of-bounds memory write past the playback buffer. This vulnerability can lead to a denial of service (DoS) through a kernel crash or potentially allow arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges.	Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:		Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-18 15:53:20 UTC

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ALSA: ua101: reject mismatched capture/playback packet sizes

detect_usb_format() cross-checks bSubframeSize, bBitResolution and
tSamFreq between the capture and playback interfaces, but never relates
the two endpoints' wMaxPacketSize and bNrChannels.  Each playback URB
gets a buffer of ua->playback.max_packet_bytes, while the number of
bytes written into it is derived from the capture stream:
capture_urb_complete() computes frames from the received capture packet
and capture.frame_bytes, and start_usb_playback() and playback_work()
multiply that by playback.frame_bytes.

A device declaring a large capture wMaxPacketSize with few capture
channels and a small playback wMaxPacketSize with many playback channels
therefore memset()s and memcpy()s past the end of the playback buffer,
in open() of the PCM node the driver registers during probe.
usb_submit_urb() rejects the over-long iso_frame_desc[0].length with
-EMSGSIZE, but only after the write.

Reject such descriptors at probe time.  Genuine UA-101/UA-1000 hardware
declares proportional packet sizes and is unaffected.

  BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in start_usb_playback (sound/usb/misc/ua101.c:586)
  Write of size 2048 at addr ffff8881098f3c00 by task exploit/5021
  Call Trace:
   __asan_memset (mm/kasan/shadow.c:84)
   start_usb_playback (sound/usb/misc/ua101.c:586)
   playback_pcm_open (sound/usb/misc/ua101.c:679)
   snd_pcm_open_substream (sound/core/pcm_native.c:2829)
   snd_pcm_open (sound/core/pcm_native.c:2865 sound/core/pcm_native.c:2932)
   snd_pcm_playback_open (sound/core/pcm_native.c:2891)
   snd_open (sound/core/sound.c:166)
   chrdev_open (fs/char_dev.c:411)
   do_dentry_open (fs/open.c:996)
   vfs_open (fs/open.c:1101)
   path_openat (fs/namei.c:4837 fs/namei.c:5000)
   do_file_open (fs/namei.c:5029)
   do_sys_openat2 (fs/open.c:1417)
   __x64_sys_openat (fs/open.c:1423 fs/open.c:1439 fs/open.c:1434)
   do_syscall_64 (arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:61 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:84)
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:121)

  The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff8881098f3c00
   which belongs to the cache kmalloc-192 of size 192
  The buggy address is located 0 bytes inside of
   allocated 168-byte region [ffff8881098f3c00, ffff8881098f3ca8)

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-10-23 01:43:24 UTC

Upstream advisory:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-98741.mbox