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NULL Pointer Dereference

CVE-2023-52736

Severity Medium
Score 5.5/10

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: hda: Do not unset preset when cleaning up codec Several functions that take part in codec's initialization and removal are re-used by ASoC codec drivers implementations. Drivers mimic the behavior of hda_codec_driver_probe/remove() found in sound/pci/hda/hda_bind.c with their component->probe/remove() instead. One of the reasons for that is the expectation of snd_hda_codec_device_new() to receive a valid pointer to an instance of struct snd_card. This expectation can be met only once sound card components probing commences. As ASoC sound card may be unbound without codec device being actually removed from the system, unsetting ->preset in snd_hda_codec_cleanup_for_unbind() interferes with module unload -> load scenario causing null-ptr-deref. Preset is assigned only once, during device/driver matching whereas ASoC codec driver's module reloading may occur several times throughout the lifetime of an audio stack.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-476 - NULL Pointer Dereference

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.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published