Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.16/6.19.6/7.0-rc1. Affected by this vulnerability is the function cxl_acpi_probe of the file cxl-translate.sh. Such manipulation leads to null pointer dereference. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-23348. No exploit exists. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.16/6.19.6/7.0-rc1 and classified as critical. Affected by this issue is the function cxl_acpi_probe of the file cxl-translate.sh. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a null pointer dereference vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-476. A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit. Impacted is availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects Found issue during running of cxl-translate.sh unit test. Adding a 3s sleep right before the test seems to make the issue reproduce fairly consistently. The cxl_translate module has dependency on cxl_acpi and causes orphaned nvdimm objects to reprobe after cxl_acpi is removed. The nvdimm_bus object is registered by the cxl_nvb object when cxl_acpi_probe() is called. With the nvdimm_bus object missing, __nd_device_register() will trigger NULL pointer dereference when accessing the dev->parent that points to &nvdimm_bus->dev. [ 192.884510] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000006c [ 192.895383] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS edk2-20250812-19.fc42 08/12/2025 [ 192.897721] Workqueue: cxl_port cxl_bus_rescan_queue [cxl_core] [ 192.899459] RIP: 0010:kobject_get+0xc/0x90 [ 192.924871] Call Trace: [ 192.925959] <TASK> [ 192.926976] ? pm_runtime_init+0xb9/0xe0 [ 192.929712] __nd_device_register.part.0+0x4d/0xc0 [libnvdimm] [ 192.933314] __nvdimm_create+0x206/0x290 [libnvdimm] [ 192.936662] cxl_nvdimm_probe+0x119/0x1d0 [cxl_pmem] [ 192.940245] cxl_bus_probe+0x1a/0x60 [cxl_core] [ 192.943349] really_probe+0xde/0x380 This patch also relies on the previous change where devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() is called from drivers/cxl/pmem.c instead of drivers/cxl/core.c to ensure the dependency of cxl_acpi on cxl_pmem. 1. Set probe_type of cxl_nvb to PROBE_FORCE_SYNCHRONOUS to ensure the driver is probed synchronously when add_device() is called. 2. Add a check in __devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() to ensure that the cxl_nvb driver is attached during cxl_acpi_probe(). 3. Take the cxl_root uport_dev lock and the cxl_nvb->dev lock in devm_cxl_add_nvdimm() before checking nvdimm_bus is valid. 4. Set cxl_nvdimm flag to CXL_NVD_F_INVALIDATED so cxl_nvdimm_probe() will exit with -EBUSY. The removal of cxl_nvdimm devices should prevent any orphaned devices from probing once the nvdimm_bus is gone. [ dj: Fixed 0-day reported kdoc issue. ] [ dj: Fix cxl_nvb reference leak on error. Gregory (kreview-0811365) ]

The advisory is shared for download at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-23348 since 01/13/2026. The exploitation is known to be difficult. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available.

Upgrading to version 6.18.17, 6.19.7 or 7.0-rc2 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 5fc4e150c5ada5f7d20d8f9f1b351f10481fbdf7/5b230daeee420833287cc77314439903e5312f10/96a1fd0d84b17360840f344826897fa71049870e is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.18.0
• 6.18.1
• 6.18.2
• 6.18.3
• 6.18.4
• 6.18.5
• 6.18.6
• 6.18.7
• 6.18.8
• 6.18.9
• 6.18.10
• 6.18.11
• 6.18.12
• 6.18.13
• 6.18.14
• 6.18.15
• 6.18.16
• 6.19.0
• 6.19.1
• 6.19.2
• 6.19.3
• 6.19.4
• 6.19.5
• 6.19.6
• 7.0-rc1

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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