CVE-2026-46042 PUBLISHED

mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.05.2026 Published: 27.05.2026 Updated: 27.05.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store()

weighted_interleave_auto_store() fetches old_wi_state inside the if (!input) block only. This causes two memory leaks:

  1. When a user writes "false" and the current mode is already manual, the function returns early without freeing the freshly allocated new_wi_state.

  2. When a user writes "true", old_wi_state stays NULL because the fetch is skipped entirely. The old state is then overwritten by rcu_assign_pointer() but never freed, since the cleanup path is gated on old_wi_state being non-NULL. A user can trigger this repeatedly by writing "1" in a loop.

Fix both leaks by moving the old_wi_state fetch before the input check, making it unconditional. This also allows a unified early return for both "true" and "false" when the requested mode matches the current mode.

Reviewed by: Donet Tom donettom@linux.ibm.com

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from e341f9c3c8412e57fe0042a33a2640245ecdf619 to c42a7efb9060d89b72708ffaf255d0002c2164a7 (excl.)
  • affected from e341f9c3c8412e57fe0042a33a2640245ecdf619 to 39caa9ca863f96b3d00447c5aa200cabda489856 (excl.)
  • affected from e341f9c3c8412e57fe0042a33a2640245ecdf619 to 6fae274ce0e3109cbbc4c18b354eaace1f0af7d7 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.27 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0.4 to 7.0.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1-rc1 to * (incl.)

References