CVE-2026-72135

About vulnerability

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

tpm: Make the TPM character devices non-seekable

The TPM character devices expose a sequential command/response interface, but their open handlers leave FMODE_PREAD and FMODE_PWRITE enabled.

After a command leaves a response pending, pread(fd, buf, 16, 0x1400) passes 0x1400 as *off to tpm_common_read(). The transfer length is bounded by response_length, but the offset is used unchecked when forming data_buffer + *off. A sufficiently large offset therefore causes an out-of-bounds heap read through copy_to_user() and, if the copy succeeds, an out-of-bounds zero-write through the following memset().

Positional I/O does not provide coherent semantics for this interface. An arbitrary pread offset cannot represent how much of a response has been consumed sequentially. The write callback always stores a command at the start of data_buffer, while pwrite() does not update file->f_pos and can leave the sequential read cursor stale.

Call nonseekable_open() from both open handlers. This removes FMODE_PREAD and FMODE_PWRITE, causing positional reads and writes to fail with -ESPIPE before reaching the TPM callbacks, and explicitly marks the files non-seekable. Normal read() and write() continue to use the existing sequential f_pos cursor, leaving the response state machine unchanged.

Tested on Linux 6.12 with KASAN and a swtpm TPM2 device:

• sequential partial reads returned the complete response
• pread() and preadv() with offset 0x1400 returned -ESPIPE
• pwrite() and pwritev() with offset zero returned -ESPIPE
• the pending response remained intact after the rejected operations
• a subsequent normal command/response cycle completed normally
• no KASAN report was produced.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 4.18.0 (+7 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.