Medium [CVE-2026-64205] fix hardware state machine corruption in error path
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-64205 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: i2c: i801: fix hardware state machine corruption in error path A severe livelock and subsequent Hung Task panic were observed in the i2c-i801 driver during concurrent Fuzzing. The crash is caused by an unconditional hardware register cleanup in the error handling path of i801_access().
When i801_check_pre() fails (e.g., returning -EBUSY because the SMBus controller is actively used by BIOS/ACPI), the kernel does not actually acquire the hardware ownership.
However, the code jumps to the 'out' label and executes: iowrite8(SMBHSTSTS_INUSE_STS | STATUS_FLAGS, SMBHSTSTS(priv)); This forcefully clears the INUSE_STS lock and resets the hardware status flags without owning the controller. Doing so interrupts ongoing BIOS/ACPI transactions and totally corrupts the SMBus hardware state machine.
Consequently, all subsequent i801_access() calls fail at the pre-check stage, triggering an endless stream of "SMBus is busy, can't use it!" error logs.
Over a slow serial console, this printk flood monopolizes the CPU (Console Livelock), starving other processes trying to acquire the mmap_lock down_read semaphore, ultimately triggering the hung task watchdog. Fix this by moving the 'out' label below the hardware register cleanup.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
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