CVE-2026-89436 platform/x86: panasonic-laptop: Fix sentinel write past pcc->sinf[]
A heap buffer overflow in the panasonic-laptop kernel driver allows attackers to corrupt memory, 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-2026-89436?
CVE-2026-89436 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 11 Sep 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:
platform/x86: panasonic-laptop: Fix sentinel write past pcc->sinf[]
acpi_pcc_retrieve_biosdata() rejects SINF packages only when pcc->num_sifr is strictly less than hkey->package.count, then unconditionally writes a trailing sentinel at pcc->sinf[hkey->package.count]. But pcc->sinf[] is allocated with exactly pcc->num_sifr elements (valid indices 0..num_sifr-1), so that write needs num_sifr strictly greater than package.count to stay in bounds -- num_sifr == package.count passes the existing check but still overflows by one element.
This is exactly the case probe()'s existing num_sifr++ workaround ("Some DSDT-s have an off-by-one bug where the SINF package count is one higher than the SQTY reported value") is written to accommodate: when a DSDT's SINF package count equals SQTY+1, the workaround makes num_sifr equal to package.count, which is precisely the boundary that overflows here. Found via UBSan (array-index-out-of-bounds) on hardware where HKEY.SQTY returns 37 and HKEY.SINF()'s package has 38 elements: num_sifr becomes 38 after the += 1 workaround, the loop correctly fills indices 0..37, and the sentinel write then targets index 38, one past the end -- a silent 4-byte heap overflow on kernels without CONFIG_UBSAN.
Tightening the rejection check to num_sifr <= package.count would avoid the overflow but breaks probe() entirely on exactly this hardware, since num_sifr == package.count is the case the off-by-one workaround exists to support. Nothing else in the driver reads this sentinel value back, so simply skip the write when there is no room for it instead.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-89436?
How do I fix CVE-2026-89436?
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-2026-89436 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-89436 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-j34j-9955-32cv, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-89436.