Executive brief
A resource management issue was identified in the Texas Instruments ICSSM Ethernet driver within the Linux kernel. When the system fails to initialize the network driver due to a specific configuration error, it fails to properly release internal memory references. While this is a minor technical flaw, it could theoretically lead to a gradual depletion of system resources if the driver repeatedly fails to load.
Technical details
A reference count leak exists in drivers/net/ethernet/ti/icssm/icssm_prueth.c. During the icssm_prueth_probe() function, the 'eth_ports_node' is acquired via Open Firmware (OF) APIs. If of_property_read_u32() fails within the for_each_child_of_node() loop, the function returns an error without calling of_node_put() on eth_ports_node. This results in a kernel object reference leak. The vulnerability is reachable during device discovery/probing and has been fixed by ensuring of_node_put() is called in the error path.
Affected products
- Linux Linux 6.18, 7.0
Timeline
- 2026-05-08: patched: Initial fix committed to mainline kernel.
- 2026-07-19: disclosed: CVE-2026-64161 published.