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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-97480 json

tty: serial: 8250: protect against NULL uart->port.dev in register

published 2026-09-24 45 d ago modified 2026-10-30 10 d ago also EUVD-2026-86078

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 6%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

tty: serial: 8250: protect against NULL uart->port.dev in register

serial8250_register_8250_port() conditionally copies uart->port.dev from up->port.dev only when up->port.dev is non-NULL:

if (up->port.dev) { uart->port.dev = up->port.dev; ... }

So if both the existing uart slot and up have a NULL ->dev, uart->port.dev remains NULL. The very next ACPI companion check then dereferences it unconditionally:

if (!has_acpi_companion(uart->port.dev)) {

has_acpi_companion() reads dev->fwnode without a NULL guard (include/linux/acpi.h), so this NULL-derefs the kernel for the remaining no-dev case rather than just skipping the mctrl_gpio_init() initialisation as intended.

smatch flags the inconsistency:

drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_core.c:767 serial8250_register_8250_port() error: 'uart->port.dev' could be null (see line 719)

Guard the call with a NULL check so register continues to work for callers that legitimately have no parent device (legacy non-OF/non-ACPI registrations).

No functional change for callers that pass a non-NULL ->dev.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12.114, 6.18.53, 7.2
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.115-2
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97480

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.17
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.16
  • linux-hwe-7.0 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-7.0 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97480

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.161.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-103814

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-97480 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: tty: serial: 8250: protect against NULL uart->port.dev in register

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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