CVE-2026-53385

About vulnerability

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

vc_screen: fix null-ptr-deref in vcs_notifier() during concurrent vcs_write

A KASAN null-ptr-deref was observed in vcs_notifier():

BUG: KASAN: null-ptr-deref in vcs_notifier+0x98/0x130 Read of size 2 at addr qmp_cmd_name: qmp_capabilities, arguments: {}

The issue is a race condition in vcs_write(). When the console_lock is temporarily dropped (to copy data from userspace), the vc_data pointer obtained from vcs_vc() may become stale. After re-acquiring the lock, vcs_vc() is called again to re-validate the pointer. If the vc has been deallocated in the meantime, vcs_vc() returns NULL, and the while loop breaks (with written > 0). However, after the loop, vcs_scr_updated(vc) is still called with the now-NULL vc pointer, leading to a null pointer dereference in the notifier chain (vcs_notifier dereferences param->vc).

Fix this by adding a NULL check for vc before calling vcs_scr_updated().

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 5.14.0 (+3 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.