CVE-2026-46081
Published: 27 May 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-46081 is a high-severity an unspecified weakness vulnerability in Kernel (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 5.7th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-32464
Vulnerability details
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: acomp - fix wrong pointer stored by acomp_save_req() acomp_save_req() stores &req->chain in req->base.data. When acomp_reqchain_done() is invoked on asynchronous completion, it receives &req->chain as the data argument but casts…
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it directly to struct acomp_req. Since data points to the chain member, all subsequent field accesses are at a wrong offset, resulting in memory corruption. The issue occurs when an asynchronous hardware implementation, such as the QAT driver, completes a request that uses the DMA virtual address interface (e.g. acomp_request_set_src_dma()). This combination causes crypto_acomp_compress() to enter the acomp_do_req_chain() path, which sets acomp_reqchain_done() as the completion callback via acomp_save_req(). With KASAN enabled, this manifests as a general protection fault in acomp_reqchain_done(): general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xe000040000000000 KASAN: probably user-memory-access in range [0x0000400000000000-0x0000400000000007] RIP: 0010:acomp_reqchain_done+0x15b/0x4e0 Call Trace: <IRQ> qat_comp_alg_callback+0x5d/0xa0 [intel_qat] adf_ring_response_handler+0x376/0x8b0 [intel_qat] adf_response_handler+0x60/0x170 [intel_qat] tasklet_action_common+0x223/0x820 handle_softirqs+0x1ab/0x640 </IRQ> Fix this by storing the request itself in req->base.data instead of &req->chain, so that acomp_reqchain_done() receives the correct pointer. Simplify acomp_restore_req() accordingly to access req->chain directly.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Kernel memory corruption bug in acomp request handling enables local privilege escalation via crafted async crypto requests.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
No mitigating controls mapped yet. The per-CVE control annotator has not reached this CVE.