Medium [CVE-2026-72141] fix locked bus on SMBus block-read of 0 (IRQ)
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-72141 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat package: kernel.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: i2c: imx: fix locked bus on SMBus block-read of 0 (IRQ) SMBus 3.1 6.5.7 allows a Block Read byte count of 0, but the interrupt-driven block-read state machine rejects it as -EPROTO.
Worse, it returns without a NACK+STOP: the next receive cycle has already started, so the target keeps holding SDA and the bus stays stuck until a power cycle of this i2c controller. Accept count=0: NACK the in-flight dummy byte (TXAK) and set msg->len to 2 so i2c_imx_isr_read_continue() emits STOP via its normal last-byte path.
The dummy byte is discarded; block-read callers only consume buf[0..count-1]. Reading I2DR has likewise already armed the next byte on the count > I2C_SMBUS_BLOCK_MAX error path, so NACK it (TXAK) before aborting with -EPROTO; otherwise the failing transfer's STOP cannot complete and the bus stays held.
The atomic path regressed earlier (v3.16) and is fixed separately; this patch covers only the v6.13 state-machine rework. A malicious device on the I2C bus or a local attacker with access to the I2C bus could exploit this vulnerability by initiating an SMBus block-read operation with a zero byte count.
This can cause the I2C bus to become locked, requiring a power cycle of the controller to restore functionality, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS).
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 24 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 24 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 24 days ago·verify at source
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