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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-43229

| EUVDEUVD-2026-27792 MEDIUM
2026-05-06 Linux GHSA-7vr5-gjv8-9p58
Information Disclosure Linux
5.5
CVSS 3.1 · NVD
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Severity by source

NVD PRIMARY
5.5 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
vuln.today AI
4.7 MEDIUM

AC:H reflects the race condition timing requirement between autosuspend and active encoding; all other metrics align with the provided vector.

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
MEDIUM
qualitative

Primary rating from NVD.

CVSS VectorNVD

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

4
Analysis Generated
Jul 24, 2026 - 00:57 vuln.today
CVSS changed
May 08, 2026 - 21:22 NVD
5.5 (MEDIUM)
Patch available
May 06, 2026 - 13:32 EUVD
CVE Published
May 06, 2026 - 11:28 nvd
MEDIUM 5.5

DescriptionCVE.org

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

media: chips-media: wave5: Fix device cleanup order to prevent kernel panic

Move video device unregistration to the beginning of the remove function to ensure all video operations are stopped before cleaning up the worker thread and disabling PM runtime. This prevents hardware register access after the device has been powered down.

In polling mode, the hrtimer periodically triggers wave5_vpu_timer_callback() which queues work to the kthread worker. The worker executes wave5_vpu_irq_work_fn() which reads hardware registers via wave5_vdi_read_register().

The original cleanup order disabled PM runtime and powered down hardware before unregistering video devices. When autosuspend triggers and powers off the hardware, the video devices are still registered and the worker thread can still be triggered by the hrtimer, causing it to attempt reading registers from powered-off hardware. This results in a bus error (synchronous external abort) and kernel panic.

This causes random kernel panics during encoding operations:

Internal error: synchronous external abort: 0000000096000010 [#1] PREEMPT SMP Modules linked in: wave5 rpmsg_ctrl rpmsg_char ... CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1520 Comm: vpu_irq_thread Tainted: G M W pc : wave5_vdi_read_register+0x10/0x38 [wave5] lr : wave5_vpu_irq_work_fn+0x28/0x60 [wave5] Call trace: wave5_vdi_read_register+0x10/0x38 [wave5] kthread_worker_fn+0xd8/0x238 kthread+0x104/0x120 ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 Code: aa1e03e9 d503201f f9416800 8b214000 (b9400000) ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- Kernel panic - not syncing: synchronous external abort: Fatal exception

AnalysisAI

Kernel panic in the Linux kernel's chips-media wave5 VPU driver stems from an incorrect device cleanup order during module removal or autosuspend, allowing a powered-down hardware state to be accessed by a still-running worker thread. Systems with chips-media wave5 VPU hardware running video encoding workloads are vulnerable to a local denial-of-service via synchronous external abort (bus error). No public exploit exists and no active exploitation is confirmed; EPSS is 0.02% (5th percentile), reflecting the niche hardware requirement.

Technical ContextAI

The chips-media wave5 driver (cpe:2.3:a:linux:linux:*) implements a VPU (Video Processing Unit) in the Linux kernel media subsystem. In polling mode, an hrtimer periodically fires wave5_vpu_timer_callback(), queuing work to a kthread worker that executes wave5_vpu_irq_work_fn(), which reads hardware registers via wave5_vdi_read_register(). The root cause is a cleanup sequencing flaw: the original remove() function disabled PM runtime and powered down hardware before unregistering video devices and stopping the worker thread. Once PM runtime triggered autosuspend and cut power to the hardware, the hrtimer could still fire and the worker could still attempt MMIO register reads against a de-energized device, producing a synchronous external abort (ARM bus fault code 0x96000010) and a fatal kernel panic. This is a TOCTOU-adjacent race condition in teardown logic rather than a classic CWE-categorized flaw; NVD lists CWE as N/A. The fix moves video device unregistration to the beginning of remove() to drain all in-flight operations before power-down.

RemediationAI

Upgrade to a patched Linux kernel release: 6.12.75, 6.18.16, 6.19.6, or 7.0, whichever applies to the target stable branch. Stable-tree patches are available directly at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/dc2b7deae740a3ed138fb7ae17c97fa4055cfc5f and sibling commits. Red Hat and SUSE users should monitor vendor errata for backported fixes to their respective kernel packages. As a compensating control where patching is not immediately possible, disabling or blacklisting the wave5 kernel module (modprobe -r wave5 or adding 'blacklist wave5' to /etc/modprobe.d/) will prevent the driver from loading and eliminate the vulnerable code path entirely; this trade-off disables wave5 VPU hardware acceleration. Alternatively, disabling kernel autosuspend for the specific device via udev rules (ATTR{power/control}='on') reduces the probability of the race but does not eliminate it during explicit device removal.

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Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Medium
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP7 Fixed

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CVE-2026-43229 vulnerability details – vuln.today
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