Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-98160: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: staging: rtl8723bs: fix mismatched free of HalData in rtw_sdio_if1_init

CVE-2026-98160 · Severity: info · Published 2026-09-25

Executive brief

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

staging: rtl8723bs: fix mismatched free of HalData in rtw_sdio_if1_init()

padapter->HalData is allocated via vzalloc(), but incorrectly freed using kfree() in the rtw_sdio_if1_init() error path. Using kfree() to release this vmalloc-backed buffer can lead to memory corruption.

Use rtw_hal_data_deinit() to pair the free correctly and free HalData with vfree().

The bug was first flagged by an experimental static analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs. Manual inspection confirms that the issue is still present in current mainline.

An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have suitable RTL8723BS SDIO hardware to test with, no runtime testing was able to be performed.

References