Executive brief
A memory leak was identified in the Linux kernel's AMD P-State driver, which manages power and performance for AMD processors. When the system fails to initialize certain power policy settings, it fails to release previously allocated memory. Over time, repeated initialization failures could lead to increased memory consumption, potentially impacting system stability or performance.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the Linux kernel's AMD P-State driver (drivers/cpufreq/amd-pstate.c). The function amd_pstate_epp_cpu_init() allocates a 'cpudata' object but fails to free it if the subsequent call to amd_pstate_set_epp() returns an error. This vulnerability is reachable locally during CPU frequency policy initialization. While the impact is primarily a gradual consumption of kernel memory (denial of service via resource exhaustion), it requires specific hardware initialization failure conditions to trigger. The issue has been resolved by adding a proper cleanup path (goto free_cpudata1) in the error handling logic.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.14 to 7.1
Timeline
- 2026-06-24: disclosed: CVE published by kernel.org
- 2026-04-02: patched: Initial fix commit beda3b363546a423e4e29a7395e04c0ac4ff677e