Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's Marvell OcteonTX2 network driver. This driver is used to manage high-performance network interfaces in specific server hardware. An attacker with local access could repeatedly trigger driver operations to exhaust system memory, potentially leading to a system crash or service outage.
Technical details
A memory leak (CWE-401) exists in the octeontx2-af driver, specifically within the CGX (Cloud Gateway Xpress) component. The RX/TX flow-control bitmaps (rx_fc_pfvf_bmap and tx_fc_pfvf_bmap) are allocated during initialization in cgx_lmac_init() but are not released during the teardown process in cgx_lmac_exit(). This vulnerability is reachable via local administrative actions such as unbinding and rebinding the driver. Repeated execution of these operations causes cumulative memory consumption (kmemleak), which can eventually lead to a denial-of-service condition due to kernel memory exhaustion. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches (5.15.y, 6.1.y, 6.6.y, 6.12.y, 6.18.y, and 6.19.y).
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 5.18 to 6.1.165, 6.2 to 6.6.128, 6.7 to 6.12.75, 6.13 to 6.18.16, 6.19 to 6.19.6
Timeline
- 2026-02-06: patched: Initial patch authored by Bo Sun
- 2026-05-06: disclosed: CVE published by kernel.org
- 2026-05-06: advisory
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/013ac469596a0b8671e62d89c89ae0bd46bbe667
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3def995c4ede842adf509c410e92d09a0cedc965
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6d389382ee655128056fbdab86baad8495ffbf33
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ad8a13a45c5c24d0d32de9a1c3fd58498a675ece
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ccca14bbdcc25829d355b9f4d3249f43dadb71c1
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ccef79af58b43787c25710c9da96651c6ddfe50f