Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-53334 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 2th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-40968
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/damon/reclaim: handle ctx allocation failure Patch series "mm/damon/{reclaim,lru_sort}: handle ctx allocation failures". DAMON_RECLAIM and DAMON_LRU_SORT could dereference NULL pointers if their damon_ctx object allocations fail. The bugs are expected to…
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happen infrequently because the allocations are arguably too small to fail on common setups. But theoretically they are possible and the consequences are bad. Fix those. The issues were discovered [1] by Sashiko. This patch (of 2): DAMON_RECLAIM allocates the damon_ctx object for its kdamond in its init function. damon_reclaim_enabled_store() wrongly assumes the allocation will always succeed once tried. If the damon_ctx allocation was failed, therefore, code execution reaches to damon_commit_ctx() while 'ctx' is NULL. As a result, it dereferences the NULL 'ctx' pointer. Avoid the NULL dereference by returning -ENOMEM if 'ctx' is NULL.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.