Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Nouveau graphics driver. This issue occurs when the system fails to properly initialize certain NVIDIA graphics hardware, leading to a small amount of system memory being permanently occupied until the system is rebooted. While this does not allow for data theft, it could theoretically be used to slowly exhaust system resources if hardware initialization is repeatedly triggered and fails.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the Nouveau DRM driver (drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_drm.c) within the nouveau_drm_probe function. When the call to aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_devices() or drm_aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_framebuffers() fails, the error path returns an error code immediately without calling nvkm_device_del(). This results in a leak of the nvkm_device object allocated by nvkm_device_pci_new() and leaves an unbalanced pci_enable_device() reference. An attacker with the ability to trigger driver probing could potentially cause a kernel memory leak. The issue has been resolved by ensuring the error path jumps to the appropriate cleanup label.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel Nouveau DRM driver
Timeline
- 2026-04-11: other: Patch submitted by developer
- 2026-06-09: disclosed: CVE published