CVE-2026-46042

Technical Description

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 <[email protected]>

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References