CVE-2026-74261 — ALSA: seq: avoid stale FIFO cells during resize

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ALSA: seq: avoid stale FIFO cells during resize

snd_seq_fifo_resize() still needs to publish the replacement pool before it waits for FIFO users. A blocking snd_seq_read() holds f->use_lock while it sleeps, so concurrent senders must be able to queue to the new pool and wake that reader instead of failing against a closing old pool.

However, snd_seq_fifo_event_in() duplicates an event before it takes f->lock, and snd_seq_read() can dequeue a cell and later call snd_seq_fifo_cell_putback() if copy_to_user() or snd_seq_expand_var_event() fails. If resize swaps f->pool and detaches oldhead in between, either path can relink an old-pool cell after the snapshot. That stale cell sits outside the drained oldhead list, keeps oldpool->counter elevated, and can leave snd_seq_pool_delete() waiting for the retired pool to drain.

Keep the existing swap-before-wait ordering in snd_seq_fifo_resize(), but reject stale cells before any FIFO relink. Revalidate event-in cells under f->lock and retry them against the published replacement pool, and free stale putback cells instead of linking them back into the FIFO.

The buggy scenario involves two paths, with each column showing the order within that path:

resize path: relink path: 1. Allocate newpool. 1. Take f->use_lock. 2. Swap f->pool to newpool and 2. Duplicate or dequeue an old-pool detach oldhead. cell before old…

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CVE-2026-74261 — ALSA: seq: avoid stale FIFO cells during resize