CVE-2026-68206: 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: media: v4l2-ctrls: validate HEVC active reference counts HEVC slice parameters are shared stateless V4L2 controls, but the common validation path does not verify the active L0/L1 reference counts before driver-specific code consumes them. The original report came from Cedrus, but the active count bounds are not Cedrus-specific. Validate them in the common HEVC slice control path so stateless HEVC drivers get the same basic guarantees as soon as the control is queued. Do not reject ref_idx_l0/ref_idx_l1 entries here. Existing userspace may use out-of-range sentinel values such as 0xff for missing references, and some hardware can use that information for concealment. Keep this common check limited to the active reference counts.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 5.14, before 6.1.183 (fixed in 6.1.183); from 6.2, before 6.6.148 (fixed in 6.6.148); from 6.7, 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 2026-08-19.