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CVE-2026-64376

firmware_loader: fix device reference leak in firmware_upload_register() PUBLISHED

Description (CNA)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: firmware_loader: fix device reference leak in firmware_upload_register() firmware_upload_register() -> fw_create_instance() -> device_initialize() After fw_create_instance() succeeds, the lifetime of the embedded struct device is expected to be managed through the device core reference counting, since fw_create_instance() has already called device_initialize(). In firmware_upload_register(), if alloc_lookup_fw_priv() fails after fw_create_instance() succeeds, the code reaches free_fw_sysfs and frees fw_sysfs directly instead of releasing the device reference with put_device(). This may leave the reference count of the embedded struct device unbalanced, resulting in a refcount leak. The issue was identified by a static analysis tool I developed and confirmed by manual review. Fix this by using put_device(fw_dev) in the failure path and letting fw_dev_release() handle the final cleanup, instead of freeing the instance directly from the error path.

Affected (CNA)

Vendor / productVersions
Linux / Linuxaffected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 517676ec7dfca064e08f94007a4abd21969de0a0; affected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 46d403da376a8b7c1187193294953816e1a8d7fe; affected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 2619b47a0c8114eef980a56ade7e3ef4b58eb384; affected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 92f41769e5fd16bcd9ba97500d0517332e0a5b45; affected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 15432f19562fdb9199cce6d9fc24db12c71ed574; affected 97730bbb242cde22b7140acd202ffd88823886c9 before 896df22ee57648b0c505bd76ddbc6b2341834696
Linux / Linuxaffected 5.19; unaffected 0 before 5.19; unaffected 6.1.178 through 6.1.*; unaffected 6.6.145 through 6.6.*; unaffected 6.12.96 through 6.12.*; unaffected 6.18.39 through 6.18.*; unaffected 7.1.4 through 7.1.*; unaffected 7.2 through *

CWE

No CWE identifiers supplied.

References