Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's RAID1 storage driver. The issue occurs when the system fails to set specific limits during the initialization of a RAID1 array, causing the system to fail to release memory associated with background management threads. Over time, repeated occurrences could lead to system instability or resource exhaustion.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the raid1_run() function within drivers/md/raid1.c of the Linux kernel. The function calls setup_conf(), which registers a management thread via md_register_thread(). If a subsequent call to raid1_set_limits() fails, the kernel returns an error without calling md_unregister_thread(), leaving the md_thread structure and associated thread resources allocated in memory. This is a local vulnerability reachable during RAID1 device initialization. The fix involves adding md_unregister_thread() to the error handling path to ensure proper resource cleanup.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel RAID1 module
Timeline
- 2026-01-26: other: Patch submitted by developer
- 2026-05-27: advisory: CVE published and NVD record created