CVE-2026-23258: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: liquidio: Initialize netdev pointer before queue setup In setup_nic_devices(), the netdev is allocated using alloc_etherdev_mq(). However, the pointer to this structure is stored in oct->props[i].netdev only after the calls to netif_set_real_num_rx_queues() and netif_set_real_num_tx_queues(). If either of these functions fails, setup_nic_devices() returns an error without freeing the allocated netdev. Since oct->props[i].netdev is still NULL at this point, the cleanup function liquidio_destroy_nic_device() will fail to find and free the netdev, resulting in a memory leak. Fix this by initializing oct->props[i].netdev before calling the queue setup functions. This ensures that the netdev is properly accessible for cleanup in case of errors. Compile tested only. Issue found using a prototype static analysis tool and code review.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 4.18, before 5.10.250 (fixed in 5.10.250); from 5.11, before 5.15.200 (fixed in 5.15.200); from 5.16, before 6.1.163 (fixed in 6.1.163); from 6.2, before 6.6.124 (fixed in 6.6.124); from 6.7, before 6.12.70 (fixed in 6.12.70); from 6.13, before 6.18.10 (fixed in 6.18.10); …

Published 2026-03-18. Last modified 2026-06-17.