Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's LiquidIO network driver. This driver is used to manage specific high-performance network interface cards. An exploit could allow a local user to cause a gradual depletion of system memory, potentially leading to system instability or a denial-of-service condition.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the LiquidIO network driver (drivers/net/ethernet/cavium/liquidio/lio_main.c) within the setup_nic_devices() function. The vulnerability is caused by an improper initialization sequence where the netdev pointer is stored only after queue setup functions (netif_set_real_num_rx_queues and netif_set_real_num_tx_queues) are called. If these setup functions fail, the allocated netdev memory is not freed because the cleanup routine, liquidio_destroy_nic_device(), relies on the netdev pointer which remains NULL at that stage. This is a local vulnerability that can be triggered during device configuration, leading to kernel memory exhaustion (CWE-401). Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 4.18 to 5.10.250, 5.11 to 5.15.200, 5.16 to 6.1.163, 6.2 to 6.6.124, 6.7 to 6.12.70, 6.13 to 6.18.10
Timeline
- 2026-01-28: other: Vulnerability identified and patch authored
- 2026-03-18: disclosed: CVE published
- 2026-05-29: advisory: NVD enrichment and analysis completed
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1d4590fde856cb94bd9a46e795c29d8288c238fc
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/926ede0c85e1e57c97d64d9612455267d597bb2c
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a0e57c0b68c9e6f9a8fd7c1167861a5a730eb2f4
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be109646cdaecab262f6276303b1763468c94378
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c0ed6c77ec34050971fd0df2a94dfdea66d09331
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c81a8515fb8c8fb5d0dbc21f48337494bf1d60df
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d028147ae06407cb355245db1774793600670169