Medium [CVE-2026-72005] avoid full teardown before work setup in probe
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-72005 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: rt2x00: avoid full teardown before work setup in probe rt2x00lib_probe_dev() uses the full rt2x00lib_remove_dev() teardown for all probe failures. However, drv_data allocation and workqueue allocation can fail before intf_work, autowakeup_work and sleep_work have been initialized.
Do not enter the full remove path until the probe has reached the point where those work items are set up. Return directly for drv_data allocation failure, and use a small early cleanup path for workqueue allocation failure.
This issue was found by our static analysis tool and then confirmed by manual review of rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev(). The early probe exits should not call a common teardown path that assumes the later work setup has already completed.
A QEMU PoC forced alloc_ordered_workqueue() to fail before the work initializers are reached. The resulting fail path entered rt2x00lib_remove_dev(), and DEBUG_OBJECTS reported invalid work drains with rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev() in the stack.
During the device probing process, if memory or workqueue allocations fail prematurely, the system attempts a full device teardown. This teardown incorrectly assumes that certain work items have been initialized, leading to invalid operations.
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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