CVE-2026-68201: 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: ALSA: timer: drain a slave's callback before its master detaches it snd_timer_close_locked() drains the closing instance's own in-flight callback (IFLG_CALLBACK) before freeing it, but not its slaves'. When a master instance is closed, remove_slave_links() clears each slave's ->timer; the slave's own close then reads timer == NULL and takes the branch that skips the drain entirely (snd_timer_stop_slave() also no-ops on a NULL timer). So a slave whose callback is still running when the master is closed is freed underneath the live callback, leading to use-after-free. Drain the slaves too before remove_slave_links() severs them. snd_timer_stop() has already taken this instance off the active list, so no new slave callback can be queued. Take the slaves off the ack list so a pending one can't fire either, then wait for any that is already in flight.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 6.12, 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.