Technical impact
This vulnerability is a use‑after‑free in the Linux kernel power supply driver for the pm8916_lbc chip. During module removal the extcon handle is freed before the interrupt request handler is unregistered. A stray interrupt can therefore invoke extcon_set_state_sync() on a dangling pointer, leading to a kernel panic or memory corruption.
Affected Systems
All systems running a Linux kernel that includes the pm8916_lbc power‑supply driver prior to the commit that reorders the IRQ request after extcon registration. Devices such as embedded boards or handsets that employ the PMIC chip managing the power rails are particularly affected.
Risk and Exploitability
The CVSS score is 7.8, and the EPSS score is less than 1%, indicating a high severity but low likelihood of exploitation. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog. Based on the description, it is inferred that a local user who can trigger a power event while the driver is unloading could activate the race condition, potentially producing a kernel crash or leveraging memory corruption toward privilege escalation. The lack of publicly documented exploitation lowers the immediate risk, yet a local privileged attacker could still cause catastrophic kernel failure if the exploitation conditions are met.
Ubuntu USN