Bug 2516342 (CVE-2026-72179)

Summary: CVE-2026-72179 kernel: riscv: cacheinfo: Fix node reference leak in populate_cache_leaves
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's handling of cache information. This vulnerability occurs when the system fails to properly release memory references during certain operations. This oversight results in a memory leak, which can lead to resource exhaustion and potentially impact system stability.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:07:29 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

riscv: cacheinfo: Fix node reference leak in populate_cache_leaves

Currently, the while loop drops the reference to prev in each iteration.
If the loop terminates early due to a break, the final of_node_put(np)
correctly drops the reference to the current node.

However, if the loop terminates naturally because np == NULL, calling
of_node_put(np) is a no-op. This leaves the last valid node stored in
prev without its reference dropped, resulting in a node reference leak.

Fix this by changing the final `of_node_put(np)` to `of_node_put(prev)`.
Comment 1 gkamathe 2026-08-18 06:59:27 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026081539-CVE-2026-72179-825f@gregkh/T