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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-46042 json

mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store()

published 2026-05-27 5 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2026-32424

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store()

weighted_interleave_auto_store() fetches old_wi_state inside the if (!input) block only. This causes two memory leaks:

1. When a user writes "false" and the current mode is already manual, the function returns early without freeing the freshly allocated new_wi_state.

2. When a user writes "true", old_wi_state stays NULL because the fetch is skipped entirely. The old state is then overwritten by rcu_assign_pointer() but never freed, since the cleanup path is gated on old_wi_state being non-NULL. A user can trigger this repeatedly by writing "1" in a loop.

Fix both leaks by moving the old_wi_state fetch before the input check, making it unconditional. This also allows a unified early return for both "true" and "false" when the requested mode matches the current mode.

Reviewed by: Donet Tom <donettom@linux.ibm.com>

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.27, 7.0.4, 7.1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-46042

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-27.27
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1007.7
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1014.14
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-27.27.1
  • linux-nvidia Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1013.13

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-46042

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.0.11-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10954-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-46042 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.