CVE-2026-98160

About vulnerability

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 product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.10.259 (+12 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.