NULL pointer dereference in Linux

CVE-2026-64314

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: chacha20poly1305 - validate poly1305 template argument chachapoly_create() still accepts the compatibility poly1305 parameter in the template name, but it assumes the second template argument is always present and immediately passes it to strcmp(). When the argument is missing, crypto_attr_alg_name() returns an error pointer. Check for that before comparing the name so malformed template instantiations fail with an error instead of dereferencing the error pointer in strcmp(). This matches the surrounding Crypto API template pattern where crypto_attr_alg_name() results are validated before string-specific use.

EPSS: 0.002 (4.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.