Bug 2562680 (CVE-2026-99156)

Summary: CVE-2026-99156 kernel: kernel: Denial of Service via use-after-free race condition in SCSI tape driver
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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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the SCSI tape driver in the Linux kernel. A local user can trigger a race condition between device removal and open operations, causing the kernel to access memory after it has been freed. This use-after-free vulnerability primarily results in a Denial of Service (DoS) by causing a system crash, and could potentially allow privilege escalation.
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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 2026-10-28 10:48:43 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

scsi: st: Fix use-after-free race between st_remove() and st_open()

st_remove() drops the probe reference on the scsi_tape with kref_put()
and only afterwards removes its index from st_index_idr. If that was the
last reference, scsi_tape_release() frees the structure while it is
still published in the idr.

scsi_tape_get(), called from st_open(), looks up the tape in
st_index_idr and takes a reference under st_ref_mutex and
st_index_lock. remove_cdevs() does not wait for opens that are already
past chrdev_open(), so an open that is blocked on st_ref_mutex while
st_remove() holds it can take the mutex as soon as st_remove() drops it,
find the freed tpnt in the idr and call kref_get() on it:

  BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in st_open
  Write of size 4 ...
   st_open (drivers/scsi/st.c:254 drivers/scsi/st.c:1291)
   chrdev_open
  ...
  Freed by task ...:
   kfree
   st_remove (drivers/scsi/st.c:4512)

Remove the index from the idr before dropping the reference, all under
st_ref_mutex. A concurrent scsi_tape_get() now either runs first and
holds a valid reference that keeps the tape alive, or runs afterwards
and finds nothing, so st_open() fails with -ENXIO.

This restores the ordering st_remove() had before the conversion to
st_index_idr, where the tape was unpublished from scsi_tapes[] before
the final kref_put().