NULL pointer dereference in Linux kernel - CVE-2026-64457
Published: July 27, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU139488
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 6.8 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-64457
CWE-ID: CWE-476
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local user to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to a NULL pointer dereference in virtio_pci queue handling in vp_del_vqs() when unbinding a virtio balloon device with conditional queue entries absent. A local user can write to the virtio_balloon unbind sysfs interface to cause a denial of service.
The issue occurs when optional stats, free_page, or reporting queues are not present, creating holes in the queue info array and causing a mismatch between sparse and dense queue indexing.
Affected software
Linux kernel
How to mitigate CVE-2026-64457
Install security update from vendor's repository.
Linux kernel - update to 7.0 rc3