CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-68357

Low risk· EPSS 7%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.17%

7th percentile - higher than 7% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the watchdog pretimeout subsystem has a use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability. When unregistering a watchdog governor, if the governor is set as default_gov, the default_gov pointer is not cleared, leaving a dangling pointer. New watchdog devices may inherit this dangling pointer, and existing devices may be reassigned to it, leading to UAF.

Risk Assessment

The vulnerability could lead to memory corruption, potentially causing a system crash or arbitrary code execution in kernel context.

Recommendation

Apply the patch that clears default_gov if it matches the governor being unregistered. Update the kernel to a version containing this fix.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: watchdog: pretimeout: Fix UAF in watchdog_unregister_governor() When a watchdog governor is unregistered, it updates existing watchdog devices that were using this governor by falling back to `default_gov`. If the governor being unregistered is currently set as `default_gov`, the `default_gov` is never cleared. This leads to 2 use-after-free issues: 1. New watchdog devices registered after this point will inherit the dangling `default_gov`. 2. Existing watchdog devices using the unregistered governor will have their `wdd->gov` reassigned to the dangling `default_gov`. Fix the UAF by clearing `default_gov` if it matches the governor being unregistered.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS