Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Intel Xe graphics driver. This issue occurs when the system fails to allocate certain synchronization resources, leading to memory being held indefinitely. A local attacker could potentially exploit this to gradually consume system memory, eventually causing a denial-of-service condition where the system becomes unstable or crashes.
Technical details
A memory leak (CWE-401) exists in the 'drm/xe/sync' component of the Linux kernel. The vulnerability is located in the 'xe_sync_entry_parse' function within 'drivers/gpu/drm/xe/xe_sync.c'. When 'dma_fence_chain_alloc()' fails (returning -ENOMEM), the code fails to release the reference to the 'ufence' object before returning. A local user with access to the DRM subsystem can trigger this leak by repeatedly inducing allocation failures, leading to kernel memory exhaustion. Patches have been released for various stable kernel branches to ensure proper cleanup via a 'goto free_sync' label.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.18.1 to 6.18.20, 6.19 to 6.19.9
Timeline
- 2026-03-17: other: Initial patch authored
- 2026-05-08: disclosed: CVE published
- 2026-05-21: advisory: NVD analysis updated