CVE-2026-46118

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

pseries/papr-hvpipe: Fix null ptr deref in papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle()

commit 6d3789d347a7 (papr-hvpipe: convert papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle() to FD_PREPARE()), changed the create handle to FD_PREPARE(), but it caused kernel null-ptr-deref because after call to retain_and_null_ptr(src_info), src_info is re-used for adding it to the global list.

Getting the following kernel panic in papr_hvpipe_dev_create_handle() when trying to add src_info to the list. Kernel attempted to write user page (0) - exploit attempt? (uid: 0) BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference on write at 0x00000000 Faulting instruction address: 0xc0000000001b44a0 Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1] … Call Trace: papr_hvpipe_dev_ioctl+0x1f4/0x48c (unreliable) sys_ioctl+0x528/0x1064 system_call_exception+0x128/0x360 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

Now, the error handling with FD_PREPAREs file cleanup and __free(kfree) auto cleanup is getting too convoluted. This is mainly because we need to ensure only 1 user get the srcID handle. To simplify this, we allocate prepare the src_info in the beginning and add it to the global list under a spinlock after checking that no duplicates exist.

This simplify the error handling where if the FD_ADD fails, we can simply remove the src_info from the list and consume any pending msg in hvpipe to be cleared, after src_info became visible in the global list.

Weakness

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1b9f7aafa44f5ce852c00509104d10fd9eb0f402
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/735439394dde8462f9b50566727fbe333beaadaf
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cf51bec1560f8bf115d1476f60335f9d90e110b0