Executive brief
A memory management issue was identified in the Linux kernel's Industrial I/O (IIO) subsystem. This flaw causes a small amount of memory to remain allocated even after it is no longer needed by the system. Over time, repeated occurrences could lead to increased memory consumption, potentially impacting system stability or performance.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in drivers/iio/buffer/industrialio-hw-consumer.c within the Linux kernel. The vulnerability was introduced by a change in how scan_mask memory is allocated; while it was previously embedded in the buffer structure, it was moved to a separate allocation via bitmap_zalloc() without updating the release function iio_hw_buf_release() to free the new pointer. An attacker or a malfunctioning process could trigger repeated buffer allocations and releases to exhaust system memory. The issue has been resolved by adding a call to bitmap_free(buffer->scan_mask) before freeing the buffer wrapper.
Affected products
- Linux Linux 7.1 to 7.1.4
Timeline
- 2026-07-25: disclosed
- 2026-07-25: advisory