Executive brief
A memory leak was identified in the Linux kernel's Atmel AES cryptographic driver. This component is responsible for hardware-accelerated encryption on certain Atmel-based systems. If exploited repeatedly, this leak could slowly consume system memory, potentially leading to reduced system performance or a denial-of-service condition where the system becomes unresponsive.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in drivers/crypto/atmel-aes.c within the Linux kernel. The function atmel_aes_buff_init() allocates 4 pages of memory using __get_free_pages() with a specific buffer order, but the corresponding cleanup function, atmel_aes_buff_cleanup(), only calls free_page() for the first page. This results in 3 pages remaining allocated every time the buffer is cleaned up. An attacker with local access could potentially trigger this cleanup path repeatedly to exhaust system memory. The issue has been resolved by updating the cleanup function to use free_pages() with the correct buffer order.
Affected products
- Linux Linux kernel All versions prior to the fix in 2026
Timeline
- 2026-05-27: advisory: NVD publication date
- 2026-05-27: patched: Fixes merged into various stable kernel branches
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/230ad8a78fe67266b1ba4685da1abdd61471c5b8
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3fcfff4ed35f963380a68741bcd52742baff7f76
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/61516b4a5b2647dc3f8f67b5dffaf038be997511
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/65b3589d39d05699c3850202f8333e5361033ea3
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b63f1e2f0e319ad3fe4a58eb3db4fd50cc98baca