CVE-2026-72262 ASoC: SOF: ipc3-control: Fix heap overflow in bytes_ext put/get
A heap overflow in the Linux kernel's SOF IPC control allows unprivileged users to write past buffer boundaries, potentially leading to code execution or privilege escalation.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-72262?
CVE-2026-72262 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 15 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:
ASoC: SOF: ipc3-control: Fix heap overflow in bytes_ext put/get
The ipc_control_data buffer is allocated as kzalloc(max_size), where max_size covers the entire struct sof_ipc_ctrl_data including its flexible array payload. However, the bounds checks in bytes_ext_put and _bytes_ext_get compared user data lengths against max_size directly, ignoring that cdata->data sits at an offset of sizeof(struct sof_ipc_ctrl_data) bytes into the allocation.
This allowed writing up to sizeof(struct sof_ipc_ctrl_data) bytes past the end of the heap buffer from unprivileged userspace via the ALSA TLV kcontrol interface, and similarly allowed over-reading adjacent heap data on the get path.
Fix all bounds checks to subtract sizeof(*cdata) from max_size so they reflect the actual space available at the cdata->data offset. Also fix the error-path restore in bytes_ext_put which wrote to cdata->data instead of cdata, causing the same overflow.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72262?
How do I fix CVE-2026-72262?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2026-72262 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72262 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-72262, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72262, GHSA-2hhx-3vxc-cw6x, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72262.