CVE-2026-98160: 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: staging: rtl8723bs: fix mismatched free of HalData in rtw_sdio_if1_init() padapter->HalData is allocated via vzalloc(), but incorrectly freed using kfree() in the rtw_sdio_if1_init() error path. Using kfree() to release this vmalloc-backed buffer can lead to memory corruption. Use rtw_hal_data_deinit() to pair the free correctly and free HalData with vfree(). The bug was first flagged by an experimental static analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs. Manual inspection confirms that the issue is still present in current mainline. An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have suitable RTL8723BS SDIO hardware to test with, no runtime testing was able to be performed.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 4.12, before 5.10.270 (fixed in 5.10.270); from 5.11, before 5.15.221 (fixed in 5.15.221); from 5.16, before 6.1.188 (fixed in 6.1.188); from 6.2, before 6.6.157 (fixed in 6.6.157); from 6.7, before 6.12.110 (fixed in 6.12.110); from 6.13, before 6.18.52 (fixed in 6.18.52); …

Published 2026-09-25. Last modified 2026-10-02.