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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-72454

| EUVDEUVD-2026-59353 HIGH
2026-08-15 Linux GHSA-48cg-fm56-jr4v
7.8
CVSS 3.1 · Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Vendor (Linux) PRIMARY
7.8 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
7.0 HIGH

Race condition exploitation requires winning precise kernel scheduling timing, raising AC to H; local low-privilege access and full kernel memory impact are consistent with the description.

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

Primary rating from Vendor (Linux).

CVSS VectorVendor: Linux

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

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Aug 17, 2026 - 09:32 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
7.8 (HIGH)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
HIGH 7.8
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Fix race in i3c_hci_addr_to_dev()

i3c_hci_addr_to_dev() walks bus->devs.i3c, which is protected by bus.lock (rwsem). However, it is invoked from the MIPI I3C HCI IRQ handler, which cannot take bus.lock. This allows concurrent device addition/removal in the I3C core to modify the list while it is being traversed, potentially leading to use-after-free or crashes.

Remove the dependency on the bus device list and introduce a dedicated lookup table. Add an ibi_devs[] array indexed by DAT entry, maintained under hci->lock. Update the array when IBIs are enabled or disabled, so that it always reflects the set of devices allowed to generate IBIs. Also update when IBIs are freed, to cover the corner case when an IBI is freed without first being disabled (e.g. oldedev in i3c_master_add_i3c_dev_locked()).

Move i3c_hci_addr_to_dev() into core.c, reimplement it using the new array, and add a lockdep assertion to enforce that hci->lock is held by callers.

Demote a message in PIO and DMA IBI handling, from an error to a debug message, because there is a race window when the condition can arise normally.

AnalysisAI

Use-after-free and kernel crash exposure in the Linux kernel's MIPI I3C HCI driver stems from a locking gap between the IRQ handler and the bus device list. The i3c_hci_addr_to_dev() function traverses the bus device list from interrupt context without holding bus.lock, while concurrent I3C core operations can mutate that list under the lock - creating a window where the IRQ handler dereferences stale or freed device pointers. No public exploit code exists and EPSS sits at 0.16%, but exploitation on a system with I3C HCI hardware and active device hotplug could yield privilege escalation or a kernel panic.

Technical ContextAI

MIPI I3C (Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit) is a sensor and peripheral bus standard developed by the MIPI Alliance, commonly found in mobile SoCs, automotive ECUs, and embedded platforms that interface with sensors over a low-pin-count serial bus. The HCI (Host Controller Interface) layer in the Linux kernel provides a hardware abstraction over I3C bus controllers. The root cause is a classic TOCTOU race: i3c_hci_addr_to_dev() was designed to resolve an I3C dynamic address to a device struct by walking bus->devs.i3c, a list protected by bus.lock - a read-write semaphore that cannot be acquired in IRQ context since it may sleep. The fix introduces a shadow lookup table (ibi_devs[]) indexed by DAT (Device Address Table) entry, maintained under the already-IRQ-safe hci->lock, eliminating the dependency on the rwsem-protected bus list. Although no CWE was formally assigned, the pattern corresponds to CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution Using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization) and CWE-416 (Use After Free), as the race can result in a freed device struct being dereferenced during In-Band Interrupt handling.

RemediationAI

The primary fix is upgrading to a patched Linux kernel. Per EUVD metadata, resolved versions include Linux 7.1.5 (stable release) and Linux 7.2-rc1. The upstream fix commits are available at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8f851cab401c28287d536b1347d76f6e219c0db6 and https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/650716f23eac488c6696babdc7805f6a6b7427ad; distribution maintainers (Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, SUSE) should be monitored for backported stable patches. If patching is not immediately feasible on a system with I3C HCI hardware, consider blacklisting the driver module by adding blacklist mipi-i3c-hci to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and running modprobe -r mipi-i3c-hci - note this disables all I3C bus controller functionality, which will impact sensor or peripheral availability on embedded platforms and should be validated against operational requirements before deployment. Systems without I3C HCI hardware or that do not load this driver are unexposed and require no action.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Affected

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CVE-2026-72454 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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