CVE-2026-72391: Linux

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: phy: sfp: free mii_bus in sfp_i2c_mdiobus_destroy sfp_i2c_mdiobus_create() allocates the I2C MDIO bus with mdio_i2c_alloc(), a plain (non-devm) allocation, and registers it. sfp_i2c_mdiobus_destroy() only unregisters the bus and clears sfp->i2c_mii without calling mdiobus_free(). As the only reference to the bus is then cleared, the struct mii_bus is leaked. This is hit whenever a copper/RollBall SFP module that instantiated an MDIO bus is removed: sfp_sm_main() takes the global teardown path and calls sfp_i2c_mdiobus_destroy(). sfp_cleanup(), on driver unbind, frees sfp->i2c_mii directly, which is why the leak only triggered on module hot-removal and not on unbind. Free the bus in sfp_i2c_mdiobus_destroy() to match the allocation done in sfp_i2c_mdiobus_create().

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 6.1, 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 6.12.97 (fixed in 6.12.97); from 6.13, before 6.18.40 (fixed in 6.18.40); from 6.19, before 7.1.5 (fixed in 7.1.5)

Published 2026-08-15. Last modified 2026-08-17.