CVE-2026-74278

About vulnerability

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

ALSA: seq: Fix kernel heap address leak in bounce_error_event()

The comment above bounce_error_event() documents that user clients should receive SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_BOUNCE with the original event embedded as variable-length data, while kernel clients should receive SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_KERNEL_ERROR with a quoted kernel pointer.

However, the implementation unconditionally uses SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_KERNEL_ERROR with data.quote.event set to the raw struct snd_seq_event pointer for all clients. When a bounce error event is delivered to a USER_CLIENT via snd_seq_read(), the kernel heap address in data.quote.event is exposed to userspace through copy_to_user() in the fixed-length branch.

This is a distinct leak path from the one addressed by commit 705dd6dcbc0e (“ALSA: seq: Clear variable event pointer on read”), which sanitizes data.ext.ptr in the variable-length branch of snd_seq_read(). The bounce_error_event() leak uses fixed-length events that take the else branch where no sanitization occurs.

Differentiate the bounce event by client type. For USER_CLIENT, send SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_BOUNCE with SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_LENGTH_VARIABLE and data.ext pointing to the original event. The variable-length path in snd_seq_event_dup() copies the event data into chained cells, and snd_seq_expand_var_event() copies only the content – never the pointer – to userspace. For KERNEL_CLIENT, keep the existing SNDRV_SEQ_EVENT_KERNEL_ERROR behavior with the quoted pointer.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 4.19.0 (+19 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.