Executive brief
The Linux kernel's AMD ISP4 (Image Signal Processor) driver contains a memory leak in its GPU memory allocation routine. When allocating multiple GPU memory pools, if any allocation fails partway through, the function returns an error without freeing the pools that were successfully allocated. This causes a persistent memory leak that wastes GPU memory resources and can impact system stability over time.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a resource leak (CWE-401) in the isp4if_alloc_fw_gpumem() function in drivers/media/platform/amd/isp4/isp4_interface.c. The function allocates multiple GPU memory pools in sequence; if any allocation fails, the code jumps to the error path and returns -ENOMEM without releasing pools that were already successfully allocated. The fix adds a call to isp4if_dealloc_fw_gpumem() in the error handler to properly clean up all previously-allocated pools. This is a local kernel bug triggered during device initialization or resource allocation failure; no network attack vector exists. The memory leak occurs only during edge-case failure scenarios but can accumulate across multiple allocation attempts.
Affected products
- Linux Linux kernel affected versions include kernels from 2.6.11 through 6.x and later
Timeline
- 2026-09-17: disclosed: CVE-2026-90239 published
- 2026-07-30: patched: Fix committed upstream (fea97ee13c5332f67850733d6cefc1fe99460bde)