CVE-2024-53150 — Kernel
HIGHCVE-2024-53150 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.1) Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in Kernel. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-04-09) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available for Kernel — see the affected versions and patch details below.
ALSA: usb-audio: Fix out of bounds reads when finding clock sources
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-04-09. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2025-04-30.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2024-53150.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-53150 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
KernelReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Linux packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ALSA: usb-audio: Fix out of bounds reads when finding clock sources
The current USB-audio driver code doesn't check bLength of each descriptor at traversing for clock descriptors. That is, when a device provides a bogus descriptor with a shorter bLength, the driver might hit out-of-bounds reads.
For addressing it, this patch adds sanity checks to the validator functions for the clock descriptor traversal. When the descriptor length is shorter than expected, it's skipped in the loop.
For the clock source and clock multiplier descriptors, we can just check bLength against the sizeof() of each descriptor type. OTOH, the clock selector descriptor of UAC2 and UAC3 has an array of bNrInPins elements and two more fields at its tail, hence those have to be checked in addition to the sizeof() check.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐧Linux | Kernel | ≥ 5.4.0&&< 5.4.287 | 5.4.287 |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianlinux kernellinuxDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Kernel, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update Kernel to 5.4.287 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-53150 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop feeding it untrusted input: reject or quarantine files and payloads from unverified sources until you can upgrade, restrict accepted formats to the ones you actually need, and run the parsing or decoding step in a least-privileged sandbox or short-lived worker so a crash or corrupted read cannot reach the rest of the process.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
To mitigate this issue, prevent module snd-usb-audio from being loaded. As the snd_usb_audio module will be auto-loaded when a usb device is hot plugged, the module can be prevented by loading with the following instructions: # echo "install snd_usb_audio /bin/true" >> /etc/modprobe.d/disable-snd-usb-audio.conf The system will need to be restarted if the modules are loaded. In most circumstances, the sound kernel modules will be unable to be unloaded while any programs are active and the device are in use. If the system requires this module to work correctly, this mitigation may not be suitable. If you need further assistance, see KCS article https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 or…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2024-53150 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Extended Lifecycle Support - EXTENSION | kernel-0:2.6.32-754.57.1.el6 | RHSA-2025:3931 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:3.10.0-1062.95.1.el7 | RHSA-2025:3903 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | kernel-rt-0:3.10.0-1160.134.1.rt56.1286.el7 | RHSA-2025:3901 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | kernel-0:3.10.0-1160.134.1.el7 | RHSA-2025:3880 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | kernel-rt-0:4.18.0-553.50.1.rt7.391.el8_10 | RHSA-2025:3894 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | kernel-0:4.18.0-553.50.1.el8_10 | RHSA-2025:3893 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Advanced Update Support | kernel-0:4.18.0-193.150.1.el8_2 | RHSA-2025:3887 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | kernel-0:4.18.0-305.154.1.el8_4 | RHSA-2025:3871 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-53150 in your dependencies?
Find it across Linux, including transitive dependencies.