CVE-2026-48986

medium

Published 2026-06-18 · Modified 2026-06-18

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CVSS v3

4.7

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

4.7

Description

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using removable media. In pam_usb 0.9.1 and earlier, usb_get_process_parent_id() can cause an infinite loop DoS because it does not initialize *ppid on failure. In pusb_local_login(), the same variable is reused as input and output in a process-tree while loop; if /proc/<pid>/stat cannot be read (for example, when an ancestor process exits during authentication), the PID is not updated and the loop does not terminate. This hangs the authenticating process (such as sudo, sshd, or login) until it is forcibly terminated. This issue has been fixed in version 0.9.2.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

47%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-835

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

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