Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Intel Xe graphics driver. This issue occurs when certain configuration files are removed, failing to properly clear allocated memory. While it does not allow for data theft, a local attacker could repeatedly trigger this leak to exhaust system memory, potentially leading to a system crash or significant performance degradation.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the drm/xe/configfs component of the Linux kernel. The vulnerability is caused by a failure to free the 'ctx_restore_mid_bb' memory allocation within the 'xe_config_device_release()' function, even though the memory is correctly allocated in 'wa_bb_store()'. An attacker with local access and sufficient privileges to interact with configfs could trigger this leak by repeatedly adding and removing configfs devices. This results in kernel memory exhaustion (Denial of Service). The issue has been resolved by adding the missing 'kfree()' call in the release path across several stable kernel branches.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.18 to 6.18.17, 6.19 to 6.19.7, 7.0-rc1 to 7.0-rc7
Timeline
- 2026-04-03: disclosed
- 2026-04-03: advisory
- 2026-03-12: patched