CVE-2026-68231 media: airspy: Return queued buffers on start_streaming() failure
A local attacker can cause a denial of service in the Linux kernel airspy driver by triggering a buffer leak during streaming failure.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-68231?
CVE-2026-68231 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 10 Aug 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:
media: airspy: Return queued buffers on start_streaming() failure
The vb2 framework hands buffers to the driver via buf_queue() before calling start_streaming(). If start_streaming() returns an error without first returning those buffers via vb2_buffer_done(), vb2_start_streaming() fires WARN_ON(owned_by_drv_count) and the queued buffers leak.
airspy_start_streaming() returned -ENODEV early when the USB device had been disconnected (s->udev == NULL) without returning any buffers that buf_queue() had already accepted. Take v4l2_lock first and jump to the existing err_clear_bit label, which already drains s->queued_bufs via vb2_buffer_done(..., VB2_BUF_STATE_QUEUED) before unlocking.
This mirrors the uvcvideo fix in commit 4cf3b6fd54eb ("media: uvcvideo: Return queued buffers on start_streaming() failure").
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-68231?
How do I fix CVE-2026-68231?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-68231 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-68231 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-68231, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-68231, GHSA-rw4h-36vm-p4p5, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-68231.