[CVE-2026-90233][LOW] nvme-pci: release descriptor pools on probe failure [ Upstream

[CVE-2026-90233][LOW] nvme-pci: release descriptor pools on probe failure [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-90233
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: nvme-pci: release descriptor pools on probe failure [ Upstream
Commit: c25b6b28a35f9e36ce5dd6da5905bcddb2128707
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c25b6b28a35f9e36ce5dd6da5905bcddb2128707
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90233
Analysis date: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:35:03 -0400
ActionableScore: 0
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-2026-90233 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90233

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-2026-90233	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-90233 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN IMPORTANT	Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';*CWE-401;*CWE-772;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.4';DESCR 'The NVMe PCI probe path can leak per NUMA node descriptor DMA pools when initialization fails after the admin tag set has been allocated. A single failed probe is expected to leak a limited amount of memory, while repeated failed probe attempts could accumulate unreleased DMA pool objects and eventually reduce system availability. For the CVSS the PR:H is selected because reliable repeated triggering normally requires administrative control over PCI driver binding, device reprobe, or equivalent host device management. The issue is not network reachable and cannot be triggered by ordinary NVMe storage traffic. The demonstrated impact is resource exhaustion and denial of service only, with no UAF, out of bounds access, information disclosure, or privilege escalation primitive identified.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 0)  SKIP CVE-2026-90233 UNKNOWN SKIP The Fixes patch not applied yet, so unlikely that actual: url YES  NO NO unknown 	MAYBE	NVME LEAK ERRORPATH UAF DMAorINTERRUPT LINUS MEMORY  LOWERED_FROM_HIGH_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS  DECREASED_TO_MODERATEREG_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN4 DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3	-	-	checked

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

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

1. ActionableScore

* Raw conservative score: -1
* Conservative score: 0
* Raw paranoid score: 0
* Paranoid score: 0
* Applied conservative nonnegative score boundary: -1 -> 0
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

Conservative signals:

* +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource leak. Descriptor DMA pools allocated during probe are omitted from the failure cleanup path.
* -2 Host-admin-equivalent privilege. Deliberately repeating PCI driver probe and failure cycles requires host device-management control.
* Total: -1. The final score is bounded at 0.

Paranoid signals:

* +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource leak.
* +1 Potential cumulative resource exhaustion. Repeated failed probes can leak additional per-NUMA-node DMA pools, although host-wide exhaustion is not demonstrated.
* -2 Host-admin-equivalent privilege.
* Total: 0.

Not awarded:

* No UAF, double free, OOB access, stale-object use, or repeated release exists.
* No kernel crash or immediate strong DoS is demonstrated.
* No controlled payload, target selection, information disclosure, integrity impact, or privilege escalation exists.
* No remote or ordinary NVMe traffic trigger is established.
* No additional availability point is awarded because actual host-wide exhaustion is not demonstrated.

3. Reachability analysis

The vulnerable path is reached when NVMe PCI probe fails after the admin tag set and descriptor pools have been initialized. An accidental device or initialization failure can expose the leak, but reliable attacker-driven accumulation requires repeated PCI driver binding, reprobe, or equivalent host device-management operations.

Those operations are host-admin controlled and are not namespace-scoped. No ordinary local-user, network, NVMe/TCP, guest, or firmware-controlled trigger is established. A physical NVMe PCI device and the affected driver path are prerequisites, but no rare-hardware penalty is applied merely because this is driver code. This is an ordered error path, not a race.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is a missing cleanup operation that permanently leaks descriptor DMA pool objects after a failed probe. It is a resource-management defect rather than memory corruption or stale post-lifetime access.

There is no first release followed by reuse of a dangling reference, and no second lifetime or refcount mutation. The warning about double-free explains why cleanup must be placed specifically in the probe failure path, but the vulnerable code itself does not perform a double-free.

PrimitiveClass is CLASS_C because the possible security consequence is cumulative resource exhaustion. ImportantCandidate is NO because no corruption, ownership bypass, cross-boundary effect, or strong denial of service is established. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the issue is host-admin-gated, resource-only, and lacks unresolved exploitation leverage.

5. One-sentence report phrase

A failed NVMe PCI probe can leak per-NUMA-node descriptor DMA pools, but practical accumulation requires host-admin-controlled reprobe cycles and no memory-corruption or privilege-escalation primitive is established.

6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

The patch fixes a concrete but constrained probe-error resource leak with no UAF, corruption, remote reachability, or security-boundary primitive.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: high

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

Patch: nvme-pci: release descriptor pools on probe failure [ Upstream
Commit: c25b6b28a35f9e36ce5dd6da5905bcddb2128707
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c25b6b28a35f9e36ce5dd6da5905bcddb2128707

Changed files:
  drivers/nvme/host/pci.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=c25b6b28a35f9e36ce5dd6da5905bcddb2128707

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-90233 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90233

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:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
  The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 4.4

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).