Executive brief
The dell-wmi-base driver, which manages Dell hardware privacy controls (camera/microphone shutters) on certain Dell laptops, failed to properly clean up system resources during module initialization failures. If the module load process encountered an error, allocated memory and driver registrations would remain in the system, consuming resources until the system was rebooted. This is a reliability issue affecting system stability and resource management.
Technical details
A resource leak vulnerability exists in the dell-wmi-base platform driver's module initialization routine (dell_wmi_init). The vulnerability is a missing cleanup path (goto/error handling): when dell_privacy_register_driver() or wmi_driver_register() fails, the function would return immediately without unregistering previously-registered drivers or disabling SMBIOS requests. This leaves dangling references to the privacy driver and active SMBIOS request handlers. The fix adds proper error handling with labeled cleanup paths that call dell_privacy_unregister_driver() and dell_wmi_events_set_enabled(false) on failure. No authentication or network access is required; this affects any system loading the module during boot.
Affected products
- Linux Linux kernel affected versions include linux-4.x through linux-7.x (exact affected range not specified in advisory)
Timeline
- 2026-09-17: disclosed: Published on NVD
- 2026-06-12: patched: Fix committed upstream by Armin Wolf
- 2026-09-14: patched: Fix included in stable kernel releases