CVE-2026-89741
Received
Received - Intake
Revert of Media Device Registration Fix in Linux Kernel
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-89741, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-11
Last updated on: 2026-09-11
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
Revert "media: v4l2-dev: fix error handling in __video_register_device()"
This reverts commit 2a934fdb01db6458288fc9386d3d8ceba6dd551a.
The intentions of that patch were good, but it doesn't work.
The idea is that if device_register fails, you have to do a put_device
to let the ref counter release resources.
However, the V4L2 API says that if video_register_device() fails, then
you have to call video_device_release(), which kfree()s the video_device
struct.
But the put_device() will already have freed the struct, so you end
up in a double-free scenario.
There is not really a good way of fixing this without breaking
video_register_device() into two parts, one that initializes everything,
and one that does the actual device_register, and then converting all
V4L2 drivers to this new model.
That is a massive job, and it is very unlikely that device_register
will fail.
So rather than ending up in a double-free scenario, just revert this
patch, and in that case we'll have a small memory leak. Which is a lot
more robust.
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 |
