Medium [CVE-2026-72004] fix memory leak in ieee80211_register_hw
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-72004 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: wifi: mac80211: fix memory leak in ieee80211_register_hw() If kmemdup() fails while copying supported band structures, the error path jumps to fail_rate. This skips rate_control_deinitialize() and leaks the initialized local->rate_ctrl.
Fix this by adding a fail_band label that shares the rate-control cleanup path before falling through to the remaining teardown. The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing v6.13-rc1.
The tool is still under development and is not yet publicly available. Manual inspection confirms that the bug is still present in v7.1-rc7.
An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have a suitable mac80211 device/driver combination to test with, no runtime testing was able to be performed.
This issue occurs when the system attempts to copy Wi-Fi band structures, and an error during this process causes a memory resource to not be properly released. This oversight leads to a memory leak within the kernel, which could potentially impact system stability or lead to a denial of service.
Red Hat severity: Low — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). Weakness: CWE-772.
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 26 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 26 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 26 days ago·verify at source
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