CVE-2026-97979
Received
Received - Intake
Memory Leak in Linux Kernel ICE Driver
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-97979, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-25
Last updated on: 2026-09-25
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ice: add missing xa_destroy for sched_node_ids
Commit 16dfa49406bc ("ice: Introduce new parameters in ice_sched_node")
added a sched_node_ids xarray to the port info structure, but never called
xa_destroy on it.
Since xarrays can allocate internal memory, this can result in a memory
leak even if every element in the xarray has been removed.
The xarray is currently embedded in the port_info structure. This appears
to have been done because its use is within functions that take the
port_info as a primary argument.
However, this complicates managing the lifecycle of the field. The
port_info structure is allocated in ice_init_hw() using devm, and it is
not released until the devm cleanup when the driver is unloaded.
The ice_init_hw() function is called in many places, including devlink
reload, and possibly during DDP load after updating the Tx scheduler
layout.
Adding a call of xa_destroy to the ice_deinit_hw() causes Sashiko to raise
multiple concerns due to potential ordering issues and possible ways that
port_info could be a dangling reference.
To handle this, move the sched_node_ids out of port_info and into the hw
structure. All users of the array already have a pointer to hw anyways, and
there is only one sched_node_ids per adapter. While here, remove the overly
verbose comment explaining the nature of the sched_node_ids xarray.
Add the missing xa_destroy to the cleanup path and to ice_deinit_hw(),
ensuring that we properly release the xarray memory.
This was caught by Sashiko during development of unrelated code.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| intel | ice | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
