CVE-2026-72176
Received
Received - Intake
Memory Leak in Linux Kernel DAMON Sysfs
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-72176, 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:
mm/damon/sysfs-schemes: put stats for scheme_add_dirs() internal error
damon_sysfs_scheme_add_dirs() setup the tried_regions directory after the
stats directory setup is completed. When the tried_regions directory
setup is failed, the setup function ensures the reference for the tried
regions directory is released. Hence the error path should put references
on setup succeeded directory objects, starting from the stats directory.
However, the error path is putting the tried_regions directory instead of
the stats directory.
As a direct result, the stats directory object is leaked. Worse yet, if
the tried_regions directory setup failed from the initial allocation, the
scheme->tried_regions field remains uninitialized. The following
kobject_put(&scheme->tried_regions->kobj) call in the error path will
dereference the uninitialized memory. The setup failures should not be
common. But once it happens, the consequence is quite bad.
Fix this issue by correctly putting the stats directory instead of the
tried_regions directory.
The issue was discovered [1] by Sashiko.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
