Bug 2516618 (CVE-2026-72240)

Summary: CVE-2026-72240 kernel: mfd: sm501: Fix reference leak on failed device registration
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: low    
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 sm501 driver. When a device registration fails, the system does not properly release a device reference. This oversight can lead to a resource leak, potentially causing system instability or a Denial of Service (DoS) over time.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:22:12 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mfd: sm501: Fix reference leak on failed device registration

When platform_device_register() fails in sm501_register_device(), the
embedded struct device in pdev has already been initialized by
device_initialize(), but the failure path only reports the error and
returns without dropping the device reference for the current platform
device:

  sm501_register_device()
    -> platform_device_register(pdev)
       -> device_initialize(&pdev->dev)
       -> setup_pdev_dma_masks(pdev)
       -> platform_device_add(pdev)

This leads to a reference leak when platform_device_register() fails.
Fix this by calling platform_device_put() before returning the error.

The issue was identified by a static analysis tool I developed and
confirmed by manual review.