CVE-2021-46986

unknown
Published — · Modified —
CVSS v3
CVSS v2
VIR risk

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: usb: dwc3: gadget: Free gadget structure only after freeing endpoints As part of commit e81a7018d93a ("usb: dwc3: allocate gadget structure dynamically") the dwc3_gadget_release() was added which will free the dwc->gadget structure upon the device's removal when usb_del_gadget_udc() is called in dwc3_gadget_exit(). However, simply freeing the gadget results a dangling pointer situation: the endpoints created in dwc3_gadget_init_endpoints() have their dep->endpoint.ep_list members chained off the list_head anchored at dwc->gadget->ep_list. Thus when dwc->gadget is freed, the first dwc3_ep in the list now has a dangling prev pointer and likewise for the next pointer of the dwc3_ep at the tail of the list. The dwc3_gadget_free_endpoints() that follows will result in a use-after-free when it calls list_del(). This was caught by enabling KASAN and performing a driver unbind. The recent commit 568262bf5492 ("usb: dwc3: core: Add shutdown callback for dwc3") also exposes this as a panic during shutdown. There are a few possibilities to fix this. One could be to perform a list_del() of the gadget->ep_list itself which removes it from the rest of the dwc3_ep chain. Another approach is what this patch does, by splitting up the usb_del_gadget_udc() call into its separate "del" and "put" components. This allows dwc3_gadget_free_endpoints() to be called before the gadget is finally freed with usb_put_gadget().

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-46986

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-46986.html

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
suse slesaffected
debian debianbookwormfixed5.10.38-1
debian debianbullseyefixed5.10.38-1
debian debianforkyfixed5.10.38-1
debian debiansidfixed5.10.38-1
debian debiantrixiefixed5.10.38-1

References

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.