CVE-2026-23009 xhci: sideband: don't dereference freed ring when removing sideband endpoint

What is CVE-2026-23009?

CVE-2026-23009 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Jan 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

xhci: sideband: don't dereference freed ring when removing sideband endpoint

xhci_sideband_remove_endpoint() incorrecly assumes that the endpoint is running and has a valid transfer ring.

Lianqin reported a crash during suspend/wake-up stress testing, and found the cause to be dereferencing a non-existing transfer ring 'ep->ring' during xhci_sideband_remove_endpoint().

The endpoint and its ring may be in unknown state if this function is called after xHCI was reinitialized in resume (lost power), or if device is being re-enumerated, disconnected or endpoint already dropped.

Fix this by both removing unnecessary ring access, and by checking ep->ring exists before dereferencing it. Also make sure endpoint is running before attempting to stop it.

Remove the xhci_initialize_ring_info() call during sideband endpoint removal as is it only initializes ring structure enqueue, dequeue and cycle state values to their starting values without changing actual hardware enqueue, dequeue and cycle state. Leaving them out of sync is worse than leaving it as it is. The endpoint will get freed in after this in most usecases.

If the (audio) class driver want's to reuse the endpoint after offload then it is up to the class driver to ensure endpoint is properly set up.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-23009?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-23009?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-23009 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-23009 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code: 1 proofs of concept on GitHub.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-23009, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23009, GHSA-h2fj-cf53-2c8q, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-23009.