[CVE-2026-93102][LOW] RDMA/hfi1: Free RX data on late probe failure [ Upstream

[CVE-2026-93102][LOW] RDMA/hfi1: Free RX data on late probe failure [ Upstream

[AL-KERNEL]

CVE: CVE-2026-93102
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: RDMA/hfi1: Free RX data on late probe failure [ Upstream
Commit: cfad037c6d305876b877abc39fd4d7e2185e44f3
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=cfad037c6d305876b877abc39fd4d7e2185e44f3
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-93102
Analysis date: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 05:35:44 -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-2026-93102 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-93102

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-2026-93102	LOW	https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-93102 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-459;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.1';DESCR 'A resource leak in RDMA hfi1 occurs on a late device probe failure because RX support allocated by hfi1_init_dd is not released if hfi1_init or hfi1_register_ib_device fails later. The leaked objects include netdev_rx and its dummy netdev, so repeated failed probe cycles could gradually consume kernel memory or networking related resources. For the CVSS the PR:H value is used because reliable triggering normally requires administrative control over driver loading, PCI device binding, or similar host device management operations. The issue is not network reachable and is not part of the RDMA data path packet processing. Impact is denial of service through resource exhaustion only, with no evidence of UAF, OOB access, information disclosure, or privilege escalation.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 0)	YES	INIT SIMPLEFIX LEAK NETWORK HARDWARE LINUS  DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3	NO	NO	checked

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

ActionableScore=0
PrimitiveClass=NONE
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 lower bound: -1 -> 0
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::

2. Signal breakdown

Positive signals:

* +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource/reference leak. The patch directly adds missing `hfi1_free_rx(dd)` on the late `init_one()` failure path, and the commit states that `netdev_rx` and its dummy netdev are leaked.
* +1 Paranoid only for possible sustained accumulation. Repeated failed probe cycles could gradually consume kernel memory or networking-related resources, but this requires repeated privileged device/probe manipulation.

Negative signals:

* -2 Host-admin-equivalent privilege required. Reliable triggering requires control over driver loading, PCI device binding, probe retry, or similar host device-management operations.
* -0 rare hardware penalty not separately applied in final arithmetic to avoid double-counting the same reachability limitation with host-admin controlled device probing.

Important non-awarded signals:

* No UAF is established.
* No OOB access is established.
* No double release or repeated lifetime/refcount mutation is established.
* No controlled reclaim or arbitrary write is established.
* No confidentiality or integrity impact is established.
* No remote or RDMA packet data-path trigger is established.
* No reliable immediate kernel crash is shown. The demonstrated issue is a leak.
* No security-boundary bypass or privilege escalation is established.

3. Reachability analysis

The affected path is the PCI probe path for the RDMA hfi1 driver. The leak occurs only when `hfi1_init_dd()` has allocated shared AIP/VNIC RX support and a later stage such as `hfi1_init()` or `hfi1_register_ib_device()` fails.

Reliable triggering normally requires host-level control over device probing, driver binding or unbinding, module loading, or faulting the device initialization path. This is host-admin-equivalent in practical deployments. The operation is not namespace-scoped. A container or network namespace does not provide the required PCI driver probe control. Prior physical or assigned hfi1 hardware is also required, but the decisive restriction is privileged host device management.

There is no evidence that network traffic, RDMA traffic, or an unprivileged local process can directly trigger the failure path.

4. Primitive and severity interpretation

The exact primitive is a missing cleanup call resulting in a persistent resource leak of RX support data and a dummy netdev on late probe failure.

This is not active structured stale-object use. It is not fixed stale storage UAF. It is not a cleanup UAF. It is not a repeated release/refcount case. The first operation does not free an object followed by a second mutation through the same dangling reference. Instead, the missing operation fails to release resources at all.

PrimitiveClass is NONE because no meaningful corruption, lifetime-after-free, authorization, ownership, or semantic reinterpretation primitive is established. The demonstrated consequence is resource leakage. The speculative worst case is resource exhaustion after repeated privileged failed probe cycles. ImportantCandidate is NO because there is no unresolved memory corruption or security-boundary primitive. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because this is a host-admin-gated resource leak without UAF, C/I impact, or LPE evidence.

Likely operational severity is Low to ordinary Moderate.

5. One-sentence report phrase

RDMA hfi1 leaks RX support and a dummy netdev on late probe failure, requiring host-admin-level device management to trigger reliably and causing only potential resource-exhaustion DoS after repeated failed probe cycles.

6. Manual review recommendation

NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED

Reason: this is a privileged local resource leak with no UAF, no memory corruption, no authorization bypass, no remote trigger, and no privilege-escalation path.

7. Call-site confidence

Call-site confidence: high

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

Patch: RDMA/hfi1: Free RX data on late probe failure [ Upstream
Commit: cfad037c6d305876b877abc39fd4d7e2185e44f3
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=cfad037c6d305876b877abc39fd4d7e2185e44f3

Changed files:
  drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1/init.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=cfad037c6d305876b877abc39fd4d7e2185e44f3

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

The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-93102 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-93102

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).