Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's VC4 graphics driver, which is used for Broadcom VideoCore IV GPUs (commonly found in Raspberry Pi devices). If the system runs out of memory while trying to resize a specific data buffer, the kernel could lose track of existing memory, leading to a gradual depletion of available system resources. This could eventually cause system instability or a crash if the leak occurs repeatedly.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in 'drivers/gpu/drm/vc4/vc4_validate_shaders.c' within the Linux kernel. The function 'require_uniform_address_uniform' incorrectly handles the return value of 'krealloc()' by assigning it directly to the original pointer ('validated_shader->uniform_addr_offsets'). If 'krealloc()' fails and returns NULL, the original memory address is lost, resulting in a leak. An attacker with the ability to trigger shader validation could potentially exploit this to cause memory exhaustion. The fix introduces a temporary variable to validate the allocation and utilizes 'krealloc_array()' for safer arithmetic. Patches are available in various stable kernel branches including 5.15.210, 6.1.176, 6.6.143, 6.12.94, and 6.18.36.
Affected products
- Linux Linux kernel 4.8 to 6.18.36
Timeline
- 2026-06-06: patched: Initial patch authored by Alexander A. Klimov
- 2026-06-25: advisory: CVE-2026-53213 published to the NVD dataset
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/02f5e4db57c0cdd7bac89d503b301a093a0fa95c
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/30165a09f76eaf34951c818eb5d9d6e4771d76f6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4fc692dc6df5bc777cc1bcebf95179e28594875f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5d563a5da8717629ae72f9eadf1e0e340bd1658b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c034aa0b1ba5f49cbdf8ef193d6ec714d74aac27
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0ce103e89d61eef70edc1d1ae3bfd4c0aacbc2e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fd87d6966041e33ef7d2e5dc59f9a52b71c6ae5f