CVE-2026-68178

HIGH
7.8CVSS v3
CVSS v2
0.16% EPSS (exploit probability)
CWE

Description

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

misc: nsm: pin the module while the device is open

misc_open() installs a misc driver's file operations with fops_get(),
which pins file_operations::owner before replacing the file's f_op. The
NSM misc device leaves nsm_dev_fops.owner unset, so opening /dev/nsm does
not take a module reference on the nsm driver.

If the driver is built as a module, an open file descriptor can therefore
survive rmmod of the module that provides its ioctl callbacks. A later
ioctl through that descriptor can call into unloaded module text.

Set nsm_dev_fops.owner to THIS_MODULE so the misc core holds the module
while any /dev/nsm file descriptor is open, matching the lifetime
expectation for the installed file operations.

CVSS v3 vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected routers (0)

No routers currently mapped to this CVE in our database.

External references