Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-99156
Go to dashboardIn the Linux kernel SCSI tape driver (st), a race between device removal and opening lets a process open a tape device whose structure was already freed. The sources describe this as a use-after-free, which can corrupt memory; the sources do not state a privilege or impact level.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-28 11:32 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Systems running a Linux kernel with the SCSI tape driver (st) and tape devices that can be removed while being opened. The sources do not say how exposed a typical server is.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
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: st: Fix use-after-free race between st_remove() and st_open()
st_remove() drops the probe reference on the scsi_tape with kref_put() and only afterwards removes its index from st_index_idr. If that was the last reference, scsi_tape_release() frees the structure while it is still published in the idr.
scsi_tape_get(), called from st_open(), looks up the tape in st_index_idr and takes a reference under st_ref_mutex and st_index_lock. remove_cdevs() does not wait for opens that are already past chrdev_open(), so an open that is blocked on st_ref_mutex while st_remove() holds it can take the mutex as soon as st_remove() drops it, find the freed tpnt in the idr and call kref_get() on it:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in st_open Write of size 4 ... st_open (drivers/scsi/st.c:254 drivers/scsi/st.c:1291) chrdev_open ... Freed by task ...: kfree st_remove (drivers/scsi/st.c:4512)
Remove the index from the idr before dropping the reference, all under st_ref_mutex. A concurrent scsi_tape_get() now either runs first and holds a valid reference that keeps the tape alive, or runs afterwards and finds nothing, so st_open() fails with -ENXIO.
This restores the ordering st_remove() had before the conversion to st_index_idr, where the tape was unpublished from scsi_tapes[] before the final kref_put().
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