CVE-2026-74504

ALSA: seq: Fix division by zero in initialize_timer()

State
Published
Severity
Not scored
Published
Aug 15, 2026
Updated
Aug 17, 2026
Reserved
Aug 15, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

ALSA: seq: Fix division by zero in initialize_timer()

A userspace-driven ALSA timer (SND_UTIMER) lets an unprivileged user set the backing snd_timer's hardware resolution to an arbitrary 64-bit value via SNDRV_TIMER_IOCTL_CREATE. snd_utimer_create() only rejects zero.

When such a timer is bound to a sequencer queue, initialize_timer() computes the tick period as

tmr->ticks = 1000000000 / (r * freq);

where r is that user-controlled resolution and freq is the sequencer update rate in Hz, clamped to MIN_FREQUENCY..MAX_FREQUENCY (10..6250). A resolution of 2^63 makes the 64-bit product r * freq wrap to zero for any even freq, including DEFAULT_FREQUENCY (1000), so the division faults with a divide-by-zero.

The division runs under tmr->lock with interrupts disabled, so the oops leaves the spinlock held and hangs the CPU. It is reachable by an unprivileged user with access to /dev/snd/timer and /dev/snd/seq.

Oops: divide error: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN PTI CPU: 7 UID: 1000 PID: 456 Comm: alsa_seq_utimer Not tainted 7.2.0-rc4+ RIP: 0010:initialize_timer.constprop.0+0x20a/0x2d0 snd_seq_timer_start+0x15e/0x2b0 snd_seq_control_queue+0x56f/0xba0 snd_seq_write+0x3e0/0x730

Reject an overflowing product with check_mul_overflow() and fall back to a single tick, which also avoids feeding a wrapped-but-nonzero divisor (e.g. 2^63 * 1000 mod 2^64 == 0, or other resolutions wrapping to a small value) into the period computation.

Scores

The record has no CVSS score.

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 37745918e0e7575bc40f38da93a99b9fa6406224 to before d0e19932875746118e298b4c974f3b2d4aeb16fcAffected
  • 37745918e0e7575bc40f38da93a99b9fa6406224 to before 5260e195c53e898a4a76527d4bb2178f31795e78Affected
  • 37745918e0e7575bc40f38da93a99b9fa6406224 to before 42c6543ff27ea280334244458d4f52ec7133cc05Affected
  • 37745918e0e7575bc40f38da93a99b9fa6406224 to before 21e19688433452dfbbbe6b2bb670dea6eb92f0f6Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 6.12Affected
  • before 6.12Not affected
  • 6.12.103 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.18.44 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 7.1.8 through 7.1.*Not affected
  • 7.2 and laterNot affected

References

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