← back
CVE-2026-68178

misc: nsm: pin the module while the device is open

0Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Track
exploitation probability
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: misc: nsm: pin the module while the device is open misc_open() installs a misc driver's file operations with fops_get(), which pins file_operations::owner before replacing the file's f_op. The NSM misc device leaves nsm_dev_fops.owner unset, so opening /dev/nsm does not take a module reference on the nsm driver. If the driver is built as a module, an open file descriptor can therefore survive rmmod of the module that provides its ioctl callbacks. A later ioctl through that descriptor can call into unloaded module text. Set nsm_dev_fops.owner to THIS_MODULE so the misc core holds the module while any /dev/nsm file descriptor is open, matching the lifetime expectation for the installed file operations.
Affected products
Linux · Linux