[CVE-2026-97501][LOW] pinctrl: mediatek: paris: bypass pinctrl GPIO layer in set GPIO direction [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL <alkernel@kernelcve.org>]

CVE: CVE-2026-97501
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: pinctrl: mediatek: paris: bypass pinctrl GPIO layer in set GPIO direction [ Upstream
Commit: 428b031dad390edd5da729b9afd474a95dc4f76b
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=428b031dad390edd5da729b9afd474a95dc4f76b
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97501
Analysis date: Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:20:52 -0400
ActionableScore: 1
ActionableScore lower bound: 0
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-2026-97501 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97501

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-2026-97501	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-97501 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:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';CWE-667;CWE-821;CWE-764;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.7';DESCR 'The MediaTek Paris GPIO direction callbacks can enter the pinctrl GPIO layer and acquire a mutex even though the gpiochip is not marked as able to sleep. When the shared GPIO proxy relies on gpiod_cansleep and takes a spinlock first, the later mutex acquisition occurs in an invalid atomic context and produces a major kernel warning. On affected MediaTek systems this may cause a GPIO operation to stall or may reduce system availability, but the analyzed path provides no UAF, OOB access, information disclosure, or write primitive. For the CVSS the PR:L reflects a local user, service account, or reduced capability root context with delegated access to the GPIO interface. The issue is not network reachable and also requires the affected driver and shared GPIO proxy configuration. The realistic impact is limited availability degradation, while the paranoid interpretation allows a system level hang without changing the bug class to memory corruption.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1)  SKIP CVE-2026-97501 UNKNOWN SKIP No affected files built, so skip this CVE NO  - - unknown 	MAYBE	WARNONLY HARDWARE 	-	-	checked

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

ActionableScore=1
ActionableScoreLower=0
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=NO
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: 0
* Conservative score: 0
* Raw paranoid score: 1
* Paranoid score: 1
* No floor or cap was applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

Conservative:

* +0 WARN and invalid locking context. The established result is a major warning caused by acquiring a mutex while a spinlock is held. No crash or persistent unavailability is demonstrated.
* +0 corruption primitive. No UAF, OOB access, stale object, overwrite, refcount error, or ownership violation exists.
* +0 reachability. A directly network-triggerable or ordinary unprivileged path is not established.
* +0 privilege penalty. Host-admin-equivalent privilege is not positively established, so no speculative penalty is applied.

Paranoid:

* +1 plausible strong DoS. If the pinctrl mutex is contended, sleeping while the shared GPIO proxy retains a spinlock can plausibly stall kernel execution or cause a soft lockup. This remains a synchronization DoS interpretation, not memory corruption.

Not awarded:

* Controlled reclaim, arbitrary write, disclosure, integrity impact, and privilege escalation are not demonstrated.
* No extra Availability point is awarded because there is no distinct persistent consequence.
* No race penalty is applied. The defect is a deterministic lock-context mismatch rather than an established narrow timing race.
* No hardware rarity penalty is applied because the evidence identifies affected MediaTek hardware but does not establish that it is rare or physically attacker-controlled.

3. Reachability analysis

The path requires an affected MediaTek Paris pinctrl device, use of the shared GPIO proxy, and a GPIO direction operation. The exact actor permitted to perform the complete operation is not supplied. It could be a kernel consumer, a delegated GPIO service, or an appropriately authorized local process.

Ordinary unprivileged reachability is not established. Host-administrator privilege is also not positively established. No namespace-scoped capability chain, prior host setup requirement, or remote network path is demonstrated. Triggering does not require a race, although mutex contention determines whether the invalid locking context progresses beyond a warning into a serious stall.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact defect is a sleep-capable pinctrl mutex acquisition from a GPIO callback that callers may treat as non-sleeping, allowing a spinlock-to-mutex locking sequence. This is a locking-context and synchronization defect classified as CLASS_C.

There is no stale storage or active structured-object UAF. There is no repeated release or refcount mutation. The demonstrated consequence is a kernel warning. A system stall is a technically defensible paranoid consequence when the mutex is contended, but no independent exploitation primitive remains after excluding availability impact.

ImportantCandidate is NO because there is no corruption, lifetime, authorization, ownership, or boundary-bypass primitive. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the issue remains a hardware-specific synchronization warning or possible DoS without unresolved exploitation leverage. Likely operational severity is Low to ordinary Moderate.

5. One-sentence report phrase

The MediaTek Paris GPIO direction callbacks can acquire a sleeping pinctrl mutex while the shared GPIO proxy holds a spinlock, causing an invalid atomic-context warning and potentially a system stall under mutex contention.

6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

The patch establishes a synchronization-context defect with warning or possible DoS impact, but no memory corruption, security-boundary bypass, or unresolved lifetime primitive.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: high

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

Patch: pinctrl: mediatek: paris: bypass pinctrl GPIO layer in set GPIO direction [ Upstream
Commit: 428b031dad390edd5da729b9afd474a95dc4f76b
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=428b031dad390edd5da729b9afd474a95dc4f76b

Changed files:
  drivers/pinctrl/mediatek/pinctrl-paris.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=428b031dad390edd5da729b9afd474a95dc4f76b

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-97501 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-97501

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:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
  The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 4.7

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: 0
  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).