Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-99019
Go to dashboardThe Linux SCSI media changer driver (ch) takes a reference to each data transfer element drive it reads and never releases it, so removed drives stay pinned on the host. The result is a resource leak that can block device reuse and module unload until reboot, and the sources do not describe an attacker gaining access.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Hosts that use a SCSI media changer (tape library or virtual library such as mhvtl) with the Linux driver loaded and the changer reporting its drives' SCSI ids. The leak occurs on each create and remove of such a library, so systems that repeatedly hot-swap changer drives are the ones that feel it. Systems without SCSI changers can skip it.
chNo product ranges from the sources yet.
lsmod | grep ch and compare the use count before and after attaching and removing a SCSI changer with its drives, if the ch module is loaded.ch module is loaded at all with lsmod | grep '^ch '; systems without a SCSI media changer are not exposed in practice.uname -r and compare it against the fixed kernel version in the upstream stable branch.Each row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
scsi: ch: Do not keep references to data transfer element devices
ch_readconfig() looks up the scsi_device of every data transfer element whose SCSI id the changer reports in READ ELEMENT STATUS, and stores it in ch->dt[]. scsi_device_lookup() takes a reference, and nothing ever drops it: ch_destroy() frees the array with kfree(). ch->dt[] is read nowhere else - it only supplies the vendor, model and revision printed in the same loop.
Once such a drive is removed, its scsi_device can never be released. It stays on the host's device list at its address, so a new device there is refused by anything that walks the list - target_core_pscsi reports "scsi_device_get() failed for H:C:T:L" - and the low-level driver's module can no longer be unloaded. Only a reboot recovers.
It shows with any changer that reports its drives' ids; with the mhvtl virtual library (IBM 3573-TL personality), each create and remove of a library with four drives leaves four references behind, counted by the module's use count in lsmod. With ch not bound the count is unchanged, and with this patch applied it is unchanged too.
Drop the reference as soon as the name has been printed, and remove the now unused dt[] array. That also removes the array leaked when ch_probe() fails after ch_readconfig().
The same leak was reported with an RFC patch in 2022, which was not merged.
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