CVE-2026-23348 cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects

What is CVE-2026-23348?

CVE-2026-23348 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Mar 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:

cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects

Found issue during running of cxl-translate.sh unit test. Adding a 3s sleep right before the test seems to make the issue reproduce fairly consistently. The cxl_translate module has dependency on cxl_acpi and causes orphaned nvdimm objects to reprobe after cxl_acpi is removed. The nvdimm_bus object is registered by the cxl_nvb object when cxl_acpi_probe() is called. With the nvdimm_bus object missing, __nd_device_register() will trigger NULL pointer dereference when accessing the dev->parent that points to &nvdimm_bus->dev.

[ 192.884510] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000006c [ 192.895383] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS edk2-20250812-19.fc42 08/12/2025 [ 192.897721] Workqueue: cxl_port cxl_bus_rescan_queue [cxl_core] [ 192.899459] RIP: 0010:kobject_get+0xc/0x90 [ 192.924871] Call Trace: [ 192.925959] <TASK> [ 192.926976] ? pm_runtime_init+0xb9/0xe0 [ 192.929712] __nd_device_register.part.0+0x4d/0xc0 [libnvdimm] [ 192.933314] __nvdimm_create+0x206/0x290 [libnvdimm] [ 192.936662] cxl_nvdimm_probe+0x119/0x1d0 [cxl_pmem] [ 192.940245] cxl_bus_probe+0x1a/0x60 [cxl_core] [ 192.943349] really_probe+0xde/0x380

This patch also relies on the previous change where devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() is called from drivers/cxl/pmem.c instead of drivers/cxl/core.c to ensure the dependency of cxl_acpi on cxl_pmem.

1. Set probe_type of cxl_nvb to PROBE_FORCE_SYNCHRONOUS to ensure the driver is probed synchronously when add_device() is called. 2. Add a check in __devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() to ensure that the cxl_nvb driver is attached during cxl_acpi_probe(). 3. Take the cxl_root uport_dev lock and the cxl_nvb->dev lock in devm_cxl_add_nvdimm() before checking nvdimm_bus is valid. 4. Set cxl_nvdimm flag to CXL_NVD_F_INVALIDATED so cxl_nvdimm_probe() will exit with -EBUSY.

The removal of cxl_nvdimm devices should prevent any orphaned devices from probing once the nvdimm_bus is gone.

[ dj: Fixed 0-day reported kdoc issue. ] [ dj: Fix cxl_nvb reference leak on error. Gregory (kreview-0811365) ]

Weakness: CWE-362

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-23348?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-23348?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-23348 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-23348 in the wild and no public exploit code.

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-2026-23348, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23348, GHSA-j48g-pw4c-x8jm, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-23348, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2026-23348, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-23348 and 2 more.