CVE-2026-43272 ring-buffer: Fix possible dereference of uninitialized pointer

What is CVE-2026-43272?

CVE-2026-43272 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 May 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:

ring-buffer: Fix possible dereference of uninitialized pointer

There is a pointer head_page in rb_meta_validate_events() which is not initialized at the beginning of a function. This pointer can be dereferenced if there is a failure during reader page validation. In this case the control is passed to "invalid" label where the pointer is dereferenced in a loop.

To fix the issue initialize orig_head and head_page before calling rb_validate_buffer.

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with SVACE.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43272?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-43272?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-43272 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43272 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-2026-43272, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43272, GHSA-fwqr-8mv5-j4p7, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2026-43272, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43272.