CVE-2026-68178: Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 6.8, before 6.12.101 (fixed in 6.12.101); from 6.13, before 6.18.42 (fixed in 6.18.42); from 6.19, before 7.1.6 (fixed in 7.1.6)

Published 2026-08-10. Last modified 2026-08-17.