CVE-2026-31778 PUBLISHED

ALSA: caiaq: fix stack out-of-bounds read in init_card

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.03.2026 Published: 01.05.2026 Updated: 01.05.2026

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

ALSA: caiaq: fix stack out-of-bounds read in init_card

The loop creates a whitespace-stripped copy of the card shortname where len < sizeof(card->id) is used for the bounds check. Since sizeof(card->id) is 16 and the local id buffer is also 16 bytes, writing 16 non-space characters fills the entire buffer, overwriting the terminating nullbyte.

When this non-null-terminated string is later passed to snd_card_set_id() -> copy_valid_id_string(), the function scans forward with while (*nid && ...) and reads past the end of the stack buffer, reading the contents of the stack.

A USB device with a product name containing many non-ASCII, non-space characters (e.g. multibyte UTF-8) will reliably trigger this as follows:

BUG: KASAN: stack-out-of-bounds in copy_valid_id_string sound/core/init.c:696 [inline] BUG: KASAN: stack-out-of-bounds in snd_card_set_id_no_lock+0x698/0x74c sound/core/init.c:718

The off-by-one has been present since commit bafeee5b1f8d ("ALSA: snd_usb_caiaq: give better shortname") from June 2009 (v2.6.31-rc1), which first introduced this whitespace-stripping loop. The original code never accounted for the null terminator when bounding the copy.

Fix this by changing the loop bound to sizeof(card->id) - 1, ensuring at least one byte remains as the null terminator.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 02d9c5b0b5553a391448b6d655262bd829f90234 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 3f7f8bae0d52cbd07ab04b76b6aac89ef98ee9f6 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 66194c2575a4f567577ae70b1d7561163ce791a6 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to a82c1bce2d1299dd3c686a8fe48cf75b79a403c7 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 3178b62e2e31bab39f63d4c8e54bf4ee0a425627 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 3afa2e67f3523a980a2f90fd63c22322ac2b9ce0 (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 7594a6464873d90fd229e5b94cdd3b92c9feabed (excl.)
  • affected from bafeee5b1f8d32cbf791c322b40a6fa91d8ccf7a to 45424e871abf2a152e247a9cff78359f18dd95c0 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 2.6.31 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 2.6.31 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.253 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.203 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.168 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.134 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.81 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.22 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.12 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0 to * (incl.)

References