CVE-2026-44710
Heap-based Buffer Overflow in pam_usb
Publication date: 2026-05-27
Last updated on: 2026-05-27
Assigner: GitHub, Inc.
Description
Description
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Affected Vendors & Products
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-476 | The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL. |
Attack-Flow Graph
AI Powered Q&A
Can you explain this vulnerability to me?
The vulnerability exists in pam_usb versions prior to 0.8.7, where the code in src/device.c calls the strcmp() function with return values from udisks_drive_get_serial(), udisks_drive_get_vendor(), and udisks_drive_get_model() without checking if these values are NULL.
According to the GIO/UDisks API documentation, these functions can return NULL if the device does not expose the corresponding field. Passing NULL to strcmp() causes undefined behavior, which typically results in a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV).
This means that the software can crash or behave unexpectedly when handling certain removable media devices.
How can this vulnerability impact me? :
This vulnerability can cause the pam_usb authentication process to crash or terminate unexpectedly when it encounters removable media devices that do not provide certain device information fields.
Such crashes can lead to denial of service (DoS) conditions, potentially preventing legitimate users from authenticating using hardware tokens.
Since the vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity, the main impact is availability disruption.
What immediate steps should I take to mitigate this vulnerability?
To mitigate this vulnerability, upgrade pam_usb to version 0.8.7 or later, where the issue has been fixed.