CVE-2026-72004
Received
Received - Intake
Memory Leak in Linux Kernel mac80211 Subsystem
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-72004, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-15
Last updated on: 2026-08-15
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: mac80211: fix memory leak in ieee80211_register_hw()
If kmemdup() fails while copying supported band structures, the error
path jumps to fail_rate. This skips rate_control_deinitialize() and
leaks the initialized local->rate_ctrl.
Fix this by adding a fail_band label that shares the rate-control cleanup
path before falling through to the remaining teardown.
The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are
developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing
v6.13-rc1. The tool is still under development and is not yet publicly
available. Manual inspection confirms that the bug is still present in
v7.1-rc7.
An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have a
suitable mac80211 device/driver combination to test with, no runtime
testing was able to be performed.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | From 6.13-rc1 (inc) to 7.1-rc7 (exc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
