Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Intel Xe graphics driver. The issue occurs when the system fails to allocate certain internal resources, causing the driver to lose track of previously reserved memory instead of releasing it. Over time, repeated occurrences could lead to system instability or performance degradation as available memory is exhausted.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the Intel Xe graphics driver within the xe_dma_buf_init_obj() function. When drm_gpuvm_resv_object_alloc() fails, the pre-allocated buffer object (bo) storage is not properly freed before returning an error. This occurs because the function's error handling logic did not account for ownership semantics where the caller (xe_gem_prime_import) cannot determine if the failure happened before or after the bo was initialized. The fix introduces an explicit xe_bo_free(storage) call on the failure path to ensure memory is reclaimed. This is a local vulnerability primarily affecting system stability through resource exhaustion.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel xe driver
Timeline
- 2026-04-08: other: Initial patch authored
- 2026-05-28: advisory: CVE-2026-46224 published