The flaw touches the ALSA subsystem in the Linux kernel. During a pcm drain operation, a stream's runtime pointer is reused after its lock is released and a concurrent close frees the runtime structure, leaving a stale pointer that is dereferenced. This use‑after‑free can corrupt memory and, depending on context, may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a crash.

All Linux kernel builds that include the relevant ALSA source code around pcm drain (lines near 2150–2180) are potentially affected until the fix is applied. The issue is not limited to a particular version, as the patch applies to current and future builds.

The CVSS score of 7.0 classifies the vulnerability as high severity. Because the dereference occurs without any synchronization, the exploitability is considered high once a user or process can trigger a drain while the stream is concurrently closed. No publicly available exploit exists, but the EPSS score of 0.00024 (<1%) indicates a very low yet non‑zero probability of exploitation. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog, but the lack of locking for a runtime structure presents a critical risk that could be leveraged locally to corrupt kernel memory or gain elevated privileges.