[CVE-2026-72265][LOW] fbdev: nvidia: fix potential memory leak in nvidiafb_probe()

[CVE-2026-72265][LOW] fbdev: nvidia: fix potential memory leak in nvidiafb_probe()

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-72265
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: fbdev: nvidia: fix potential memory leak in nvidiafb_probe()
Commit: 7e747f7b17ccce750502fd4d0b4e866fe4f066a6
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7e747f7b17ccce750502fd4d0b4e866fe4f066a6
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-72265
Analysis date: Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:19:24 -0400
ActionableScore: 0
ActionableScore lower bound: unknown
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate / Low-like
Manual review required: NO

Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-72265 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-72265

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.

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

CVE-2026-72265	LOW	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 'nvidiafb_probe can leak the framebuffer modelist when probe fails after nvidia_set_fbinfo initialized the mode list but before the device is fully registered. The bug is a probe error path resource leak and does not provide a visible UAF OOB access arbitrary write or information leak primitive. For the CVSS the PR:H is used because reliable triggering normally requires administrative control over driver loading device binding or PCI framebuffer probe conditions. The issue is not network reachable. Impact is denial of service only through possible memory exhaustion after repeated failed probes and the practical risk is low.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate / Low-like (with actual score 0)	YES	LEAK ERRORPATH UAF LINUS 	NO	NO	checked

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

ActionableScore=0

1. ActionableScore
* Conservative score: 0
* Paranoid score: 0
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate / Low-like**::

2. Signal breakdown
* Availability impact realistic: +1. Repeated failed probes could leak memory and eventually contribute to resource exhaustion.
* Requires admin/root/CAP_* in typical deployments: -2. Reliable triggering normally requires control over driver loading, PCI device binding, or probe failure conditions.
* Rare AND difficult-to-reach subsystem/configuration: -1. This is a legacy fbdev NVIDIA driver path requiring matching hardware or device binding.
* No memory corruption signal. The patch fixes a missing cleanup call and does not show UAF, double free, OOB access, arbitrary write, type confusion, or refcount misuse.
* No LPE signal. There is no supported privilege escalation primitive.
* No confidentiality or integrity signal. The leaked object is an internal framebuffer modelist and no disclosure or write primitive is shown.

3. Reachability analysis
The bug is triggered only on an nvidiafb_probe error path after nvidia_set_fbinfo initializes info->modelist and before full device registration. In typical deployments, an attacker needs administrative control over module loading, device binding, or hardware/probe conditions. Namespaces or containers do not normally make this path available to an unprivileged user unless the host has delegated unusually broad device-management privileges. The path is not network reachable and depends on legacy fbdev NVIDIA hardware or driver use. Call-site confidence: high, because the affected cleanup label and missing destructor call are visible in the patch.

4. Severity interpretation
This behaves like a low-risk resource leak, not an actionable memory corruption issue. The theoretical worst case is memory exhaustion after repeated failed probes, but realistic exploitation requires privileged local device-management control and sustained triggering. It should not be treated as Important or Actionable Moderate.

5. One-sentence report phrase
A missing fb_destroy_modelist() call in the nvidiafb_probe() error path can leak a framebuffer mode list on failed probe, but triggering is privileged, local, hardware dependent, and limited to resource exhaustion.

6. Manual review recommendation
NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED
This is a privileged probe-time memory leak with no evidence of memory corruption, security-boundary bypass, network reachability, or privilege escalation.

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

Patch: fbdev: nvidia: fix potential memory leak in nvidiafb_probe()
Commit: 7e747f7b17ccce750502fd4d0b4e866fe4f066a6
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=7e747f7b17ccce750502fd4d0b4e866fe4f066a6

Commit description:

In nvidiafb_probe(), the memory allocated for modelist in
nvidia_set_fbinfo() is not freed in the subsequent error paths.
Fix that by calling fb_destroy_modelist().

Fixes: 1da177e ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Abdun Nihaal <nihaal@cse.iitm.ac.in>
Signed-off-by: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

Changed files:
  drivers/video/fbdev/nvidia/nvidia.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=7e747f7b17ccce750502fd4d0b4e866fe4f066a6

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-72265 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-72265

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: 0

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).