Memory Corruption Vulnerability in Linux Kernel Affecting Multiple Configurations

CVE-2026-98160

What is CVE-2026-98160?

A memory corruption issue has been identified in the Linux kernel related to the RTL8723BS SDIO driver. The vulnerability arises due to a mismatch in how allocated memory for the HalData structure is freed. Specifically, the HalData, which is allocated using vzalloc(), is incorrectly released using kfree() in the rtw_sdio_if1_init() error handling path. This mismatch can lead to critical memory corruption issues. The correct counterpart for freeing this memory is vfree(), which should be used instead of kfree() to ensure proper memory management. This issue highlights a significant oversight that was initially flagged by an experimental static analysis tool designed to identify kernel memory-management bugs, and it remains unaddressed in the current mainline code. Due to a lack of suitable RTL8723BS SDIO hardware, no runtime tests could be conducted to verify the presence of this bug during the x86_64 allyesconfig build.

References