[CVE-2026-80948][LOW] wifi: iwlwifi: dvm: fix memory leak in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start()

[CVE-2026-80948][LOW] wifi: iwlwifi: dvm: fix memory leak in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start()

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-80948
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: wifi: iwlwifi: dvm: fix memory leak in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start()
Commit: 84ba017a1e1ea7896ed1e3258c947bdbfc5299c5
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=84ba017a1e1ea7896ed1e3258c947bdbfc5299c5
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-80948
Analysis date: Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:33:12 -0400
ActionableScore: 1
ActionableScore lower bound: unknown
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate
Manual review required: NO

Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.

======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-80948 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-80948

The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity
estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the
reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue.

This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines
an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a
separate ActionableScore mechanism.

The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before
manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and
support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful
security impact.

Published priority for this report: LOW
Manual review required: NO

A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.

======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================

CVE-2026-80948	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-80948 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';*CWE-401;*CWE-772;CWE-404;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.1';DESCR 'iwlwifi DVM can leak the eeprom_blob allocation in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start() when an error path jumps to out_free_eeprom after EEPROM parsing has completed. The vulnerable path is reached during driver initialization failure and does not indicate a use after free, out of bounds access, or attacker controlled memory corruption. For the CVSS the PR:H is used because reliable triggering requires administrative control over driver load unload rebind or device recovery on affected Intel DVM wireless hardware. The issue is not network reachable and cannot be triggered by normal Wi-Fi traffic. Impact is denial of service only in a resource exhaustion sense, and practical impact is low because each failed initialization leaks a small allocation and the affected hardware path is specific.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1)	YES	REMOTE INIT SIMPLEFIX LEAK ERRORPATH NETWORK HARDWARE TEST  DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3	NO	NO	checked

======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================

ActionableScore=1
PrimitiveClass=NONE
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=YES
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=NO
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=NO
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 1
* Conservative score: 1
* Raw paranoid score: 1
* Paranoid score: 1
* No floor or cap changed the score.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

Positive signals:

* +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource leak. The patch directly shows that priv->eeprom_blob was allocated and then skipped by the error-unwind path when execution jumped to out_free_eeprom after EEPROM parsing.
* +0 Resource exhaustion beyond the leak itself. Repeated failed initialization could theoretically accumulate leaked memory, but the supplied evidence does not show a realistic low-privilege or high-rate path to host-wide exhaustion.

Negative or limiting signals:

* No UAF. No stale post-lifetime object use is established.
* No OOB access. No overwrite, invalid copy size, or memory layout invariant violation is shown.
* No repeated release/refcount mutation. The fix changes cleanup label ordering from missing free to correct free, not double free.
* No controlled reclaim, arbitrary write, callback control, or type confusion is demonstrated.
* No confidentiality or integrity impact is awarded. The primitive is a leaked allocation, not data disclosure or unauthorized modification.
* No reliable kernel crash signal is awarded. The demonstrated issue is kmemleak style resource leakage, not panic or Oops.
* No remote reachability is established. Normal Wi-Fi traffic is not shown to reach this driver initialization error path.
* Host-admin-equivalent control is required for reliable triggering through driver load, unload, rebind, or forced recovery on affected hardware.

3. Reachability analysis

The vulnerable path is in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start(), during Intel iwlwifi DVM driver initialization and error unwinding. A practical attacker would need to repeatedly trigger a driver initialization failure after EEPROM parsing has succeeded. That normally requires host administrative control over module loading, device rebinding, driver reset, or similar hardware-management operations.

Ordinary local-user reachability is not established. Namespace-scoped privilege is not applicable because this is a physical wireless driver initialization path, not a namespace-created virtual network object. Prior hardware presence is required, and the DVM path is specific to older supported Intel wireless devices and firmware. This is not treated as a direct network-triggerable Wi-Fi packet-processing vulnerability.

There is no race requirement. The bug is an ordered error-path cleanup mistake.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is a missing kfree() on priv->eeprom_blob in one initialization failure path. The affected storage is not used after free, not freed twice, and not interpreted as a live structured object after lifetime end. This is therefore not an active structured UAF and not fixed stale storage touched asynchronously. It is a resource leak.

PrimitiveClass=NONE because no meaningful corruption, ownership violation, authorization bypass, UAF, or security-boundary primitive is established. The demonstrated consequence is potential memory consumption if the failed initialization path is repeated. The speculative worst case is resource exhaustion, but that remains host-admin-gated and low practical priority.

ImportantCandidate=NO because there is no exploitation leverage beyond resource leakage. AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES because automatic closure or deferred handling would not discard an unresolved kernel corruption or boundary-bypass primitive.

5. One-sentence report phrase

iwlwifi DVM can leak the eeprom_blob allocation during driver initialization failure after EEPROM parsing, but the issue is host-admin-gated, not network reachable, and has resource-leak DoS impact only.

6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

Reason: this is a small driver initialization error-path memory leak with no UAF, no repeated lifetime mutation, no corruption primitive, no authorization bypass, and no established below-host-admin trigger.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: high

======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================

Patch: wifi: iwlwifi: dvm: fix memory leak in iwl_op_mode_dvm_start()
Commit: 84ba017a1e1ea7896ed1e3258c947bdbfc5299c5
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=84ba017a1e1ea7896ed1e3258c947bdbfc5299c5

Commit description:

In iwl_op_mode_dvm_start(), jumping to out_free_eeprom currently bypasses
the out_free_eeprom_blob label. Consequently, error paths triggered after
successfully parsing the EEPROM free priv->nvm_data but leak
priv->eeprom_blob.

Fix this memory leak by reordering the error handling labels so
that out_free_eeprom falls through to out_free_eeprom_blob.

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-rc6.

An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have
supported Intel DVM wireless hardware and firmware to test with, no
runtime testing was able to be performed.

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Dawei Feng <dawei.feng@seu.edu.cn>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260624084404.570703-1-dawei.feng@seu.edu.cn
Signed-off-by: Miri Korenblit <miriam.rachel.korenblit@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

Changed files:
  drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/dvm/main.c

Diff excerpt:

Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch.

Full patch:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=84ba017a1e1ea7896ed1e3258c947bdbfc5299c5

======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-80948 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-80948

The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level
estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact
level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a
practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list
is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information.

The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel
CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help
identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure.

This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin.

The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional
LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is
based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms
produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness
types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore.

Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability
information often permits more than one defensible interpretation:

  Conservative CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 4.1

The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation.
The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound
interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated
real-world impact.

CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment,
because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration,
hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental
conditions can differ significantly between systems.

A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation
urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites,
subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service
reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or
privilege-escalation impact.

  Conservative ActionableScore: unknown
  Paranoid ActionableScore: 1

The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated
field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not
replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and
if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see
self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7.

For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following
additional presentation split:

  ActionableScore below 5   -> MODERATE REGULAR
  ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0

The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it
possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis
and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases,
MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update.

There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0
even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result
contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as
MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without
usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens
and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage).

KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly
serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification
workflow.

AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: LOW
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): LOW

These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are
machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should
be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition.
For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/
(and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report
for non-existant CVE-id yet).

Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than
real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or
Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases,
please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses
info to this particular CVE.
And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants
or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I
need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar).
My contact email for such notifications is alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).