Race Condition in MXC GPIO Handler of Linux Kernel

CVE-2026-99189

What is CVE-2026-99189?

A race condition vulnerability exists in the MXC GPIO handler of the Linux kernel, arising from improper handling of interrupt requests during the driver initialization process. Specifically, if an interrupt occurs before the IRQ domain and related structures are fully initialized, it can lead to undefined behavior, such as dereferencing a NULL pointer, resulting in system instability. Furthermore, if any initialization step fails, the erroneous state can leave a dangling IRQ handler linked to released memory. This can lead to potential exploitation and system compromise. The vulnerability is mitigated by ensuring the proper order of operations during initialization, thus preventing the IRQ handler from being active while its associated structures are incomplete or unstable.

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