Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5 irqchip/gic-v5 use after free

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5. Impacted is an unknown function of the component irqchip/gic-v5. The manipulation leads to use after free. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-90121. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available. It is advisable to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in Linux Kernel up to 7.2.5. This issue affects an unknown functionality of the component irqchip/gic-v5. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a use after free vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-416. Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: irqchip/gic-v5: Clear per-CPU IRS data on teardown IRS affinity setup publishes an IRS pointer and IAFFID state in the per-CPU data before the remaining IRS initialization can fail. The error path then frees the IRS data without clearing that published state, leaving CPUs associated with freed memory. On initialization failure and normal IRS teardown, clear the per-CPU IRS association by removing the stale pointer to irs_data. Also invalidate the per-CPU IAFFID state for any CPUs that were tied to the IRS before it was freed.

It is possible to read the advisory at git.kernel.org. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-90121 since 09/11/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $5k-$25k at the moment (estimation calculated on 09/17/2026).

Upgrading to version 7.2.6 or 7.3-rc1 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 54937af6f4a0d44c2852a203d457902f3264c906/3dfc0ab5fefd052c6028c4632b1fad8bdaf7967e is able to eliminate this problem. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 7.2.0
• 7.2.1
• 7.2.2
• 7.2.3
• 7.2.4
• 7.2.5

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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