CVE-2026-64376: 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: firmware_loader: fix device reference leak in firmware_upload_register() firmware_upload_register() -> fw_create_instance() -> device_initialize() After fw_create_instance() succeeds, the lifetime of the embedded struct device is expected to be managed through the device core reference counting, since fw_create_instance() has already called device_initialize(). In firmware_upload_register(), if alloc_lookup_fw_priv() fails after fw_create_instance() succeeds, the code reaches free_fw_sysfs and frees fw_sysfs directly instead of releasing the device reference with put_device(). This may leave the reference count of the embedded struct device unbalanced, resulting in a refcount leak. The issue was identified by a static analysis tool I developed and confirmed by manual review. Fix this by using put_device(fw_dev) in the failure path and letting fw_dev_release() handle the final cleanup, instead of freeing the instance directly from the error path.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 5.19, before 6.1.178 (fixed in 6.1.178); from 6.2, before 6.6.145 (fixed in 6.6.145); from 6.7, before 6.12.96 (fixed in 6.12.96); from 6.13, before 6.18.39 (fixed in 6.18.39); from 6.19, before 7.1.4 (fixed in 7.1.4)

Published 2026-07-25. Last modified 2026-09-08.