CVE-2026-48065

medium

Description

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary removable media. Prior to 0.9.1, src/conf.c allocates heap memory proportional to n_devices, a count derived from libxml2 XPath evaluation of the config file, without first enforcing an upper bound. On 32-bit targets (armv7l, i686 -- both listed in the project Makefile), the multiplication n_devices * sizeof(t_pusb_device) wraps around size_t, causing xmalloc() to receive a very small size. Because xmalloc() only calls abort() on NULL return, a small-but-non-NULL allocation is accepted, and subsequent array writes overflow the heap. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.1.

References

https://github.com/mcdope/pam_usb/security/advisories/GHSA-24mw-m2vf-36vp

https://github.com/mcdope/pam_usb/issues/55

https://github.com/mcdope/pam_usb/issues/352

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-05-27

Updated: 2026-05-27

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 6.5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:M/C:C/I:C/A:C

Severity: Medium

CVSS v3

Base Score: 6.7

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

Severity: Medium