← Back to CVE intelligence
CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-98840

Vulnerability intelligence

Published Oct 18, 2026Sources checked Oct 21, 2026
N/ACVSS not listedScore unavailable
What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-98840. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.

What to do next

Remediation and response

Microsoft Security Response Center guidance

Vendor revision: Oct 20, 2026

Release Notes

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog
EPSS0.2%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability
Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field
Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships
Overview

What is CVE-2026-98840?

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

vc_screen: reload vc pointer before if (ret) in vcs_write() to avoid UAF

The reload of 'vc' added by commit 8fb9ea65c9d1 ("vc_screen: reload load of struct vc_data pointer in vcs_write() to avoid UAF") sits after the 'if (ret)' block, so the copy-failure break path exits the loop without reloading vc. If the vc was kfree()'d via vc_port_destruct during the unlocked copy_from_user() window, the post-loop 'if (written && vc) vcs_scr_updated(vc)' is reached with a stale non-NULL vc.

The '&& vc' guard from commit a287620312dc ("vc_screen: fix null-ptr-deref in vcs_notifier() during concurrent vcs_write") only handles the NULL case, not this stale-non-NULL case; vcs_notifier() then reads param->vc->vc_num from freed memory:

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in vcs_notifier+0x7c/0xd0 Read of size 2 at addr ffff888007149190 Call Trace: vcs_notifier+0x7c/0xd0 atomic_notifier_call_chain+0x70/0xa0 vcs_scr_updated+0x77/0xa0 vcs_write+0x71b/0x7e0 Allocated by task: vc_allocate -> con_install -> tty_open Freed by task: kfree <- vt_ioctl (VT_DISALLOCATE -> vc_port_destruct)

Move the reload to immediately after console_lock(), before 'if (ret)', so every break path below passes a fresh vc to the post-loop vcs_scr_updated().

Source: NVD