How should we interpret CVSS severity scores?

CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.

401,687

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-53038 — linux / linux_kernel

Out-of-bounds Read

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ima_fs: Correctly create securityfs files for unsupported hash algos

ima_tpm_chip->allocated_banks[i].crypto_id is initialized to HASH_ALGO__LAST if the TPM algorithm is not supported. However there are places relying on the algorithm to be valid because it is accessed by hash_algo_name[].

On 6.12.40 I observe the following read out-of-bounds in hash_algo_name:

BUG: KASAN: global-out-of-bounds in create_securityfs_measurement_lists+0x396/0x440 Read of size 8 at addr ffffffff83e18138 by task swapper/0/1

CPU: 4 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.12.40 #3 Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x61/0x90 print_report+0xc4/0x580 ? kasan_addr_to_slab+0x26/0x80 ? create_securityfs_measurement_lists+0x396/0x440 kasan_report+0xc2/0x100 ? create_securityfs_measurement_lists+0x396/0x440 create_securityfs_measurement_lists+0x396/0x440 ima_fs_init+0xa3/0x300 ima_init+0x7d/0xd0 init_ima+0x28/0x100 do_one_initcall+0xa6/0x3e0 kernel_init_freeable+0x455/0x740 kernel_init+0x24/0x1d0 ret_from_fork+0x38/0x80 ret_from_fork_asm+0x11/0x20 </TASK>

The buggy address belongs to the variable: hash_algo_name+0xb8/0x420

Memory state around the buggy address: ffffffff83e18000: 00 01 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 00 01 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 ffffffff83e18080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 >ffffffff83e18100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 00 05 f9 f9 ^ ffffffff83e18180: f9 f9 f9 f9 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 f9 f9 f9 f9 ffffffff83e18200: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9 f9

Seems like the TPM chip supports sha3_256, which isn't yet in tpm_algorithms: tpm tpm0: TPM with unsupported bank algorithm 0x0027

That's TPM_ALG_SHA3_256 == 0x0027 from "Trusted Platform Module 2.0 Library Part 2: Structures", page 51 1. See also the related U-Boot algorithms update 2.

Thus solve the problem by creating a file name with "tpm_alg<ID>" postfix if the crypto algorithm isn't initialized.

This is how it looks on the test machine (patch ported to v6.12 release):

ls -1 /sys/kernel/security/ima/

ascii_runtime_measurements ascii_runtime_measurements_tpm_alg_27 ascii_runtime_measurements_sha1 ascii_runtime_measurements_sha256 binary_runtime_measurements binary_runtime_measurements_tpm_alg_27 binary_runtime_measurements_sha1 binary_runtime_measurements_sha256 policy runtime_measurements_count violations

Published: Jun 24, 2026
Updated: Oct 17, 2026
CVE: CVE-2026-53038
Severity: Medium
Exploit:
CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

Severity: Medium
Score: 5.5
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWEs:

CWE-125

Affected Software
References

Software	Affected versions
linux / linux_kernel	`>= 6.10, < 6.12.91`
linux / linux_kernel	`>= 6.13, < 6.18.33`
linux / linux_kernel	`>= 6.19, < 7.0.10`

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.