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UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-46042

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store() weighted_interleave_auto_store() fetches old_wi_state inside the if (!input) block only.

MEDIUM 5.5EPSS 0.13%

Does this matter?

Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.13%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/mempolicy: fix memory leaks in weighted_interleave_auto_store() weighted_interleave_auto_store() fetches old_wi_state inside the if (!input) block only. This causes two memory leaks: 1. When a user writes "false" and the current mode is already manual, the function returns early without freeing the freshly allocated new_wi_state. 2. When a user writes "true", old_wi_state stays NULL because the fetch is skipped entirely. The old state is then overwritten by rcu_assign_pointer() but never freed, since the cleanup path is gated on old_wi_state being non-NULL. A user can trigger this repeatedly by writing "1" in a loop. Fix both leaks by moving the old_wi_state fetch before the input check, making it unconditional. This also allows a unified early return for both "true" and "false" when the requested mode matches the current mode. Reviewed by: Donet Tom <donettom@linux.ibm.com>

CVSS 3.1
5.5 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
0.13% probability · 2th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-401
Affected
linux/linux kernel
Source
416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
EPSS trend
0%3%5%26 October 2026: 0.13%26 October 202626 October 2026

EPSS 0.1% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.