From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: AL-KERNEL To: kernel-cve@kernelcve.org Subject: [CVE-2026-98437][LOW] media: qcom: iris: fix runtime PM reference leaks [ Upstream Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 01:23:51 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-AL-KERNEL-CVE: CVE-2026-98437 X-AL-KERNEL-Priority: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Base-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-KPANIC: NO X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore: 1 X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore-Lower: unknown X-AL-KERNEL-Commit: fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 List-Id: CVE: CVE-2026-98437 Priority: LOW AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW KPANIC flag: NO Patch: media: qcom: iris: fix runtime PM reference leaks [ Upstream Commit: fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98437 Analysis date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 01:23:51 -0400 ActionableScore: 1 ActionableScore lower bound: unknown Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate Manual review required: NO Summary: The Qualcomm Iris driver can leak runtime PM usage references on power-management error paths, potentially preventing device suspend or power-down without establishing memory corruption, privilege escalation, or host-wide denial of service. ====================================================================== ABOUT THIS REPORT ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98437 is available here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98437 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-2026-98437 LOW https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-98437 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW | AEGIS IMPACT LOW AEGIS_AS=1 LEGACY=LOW RESULT=SAME (final reconciliation agrees; DECISION: both 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:L';*CWE-772;CWE-404;CWE-703;BEST CVSS score: '2.5';DESCR 'The Qualcomm iris driver can leak runtime PM usage references when power domain enable or disable operations fail. pm_runtime_get_sync can leave the usage count incremented after an error, while an iris_opp_set_rate failure can bypass the matching pm_runtime_put_sync call. Repeated failures may leave the device or power domain active and prevent normal runtime suspend, resulting in increased power use or limited device availability. For the CVSS the PR:L reflects that a local process with access to the media device may exercise the affected power management path, although reliable control over the required runtime PM or OPP failure is not demonstrated. The issue is not network reachable. No memory corruption, information disclosure, privilege escalation, or immediate system wide resource exhaustion is supported by the affected code. Automated impact decision path. The original SimpleNet classifier selected LOW. The primary LLM estimated paranoid CVSS 2.5 and the production ActionableScore returned 1 with recommendation Ordinary Moderate. The production rules then evaluated CVSS thresholds and ActionableScore thresholds. No severity changing production threshold or specialist override was recorded. The legacy KP specialist has no review artifact for this run. The legacy FD or DH downgrade specialist has no review artifact for this run. The independent weaker Aegis shadow evaluated CVSS 3.1 and ActionableScore 1 with primitive class CLASS_C and manual review NO. Its independently reconciled impact was LOW. The shadow agreed with the final production impact and aggregation did not change that impact. The final reported impact is LOW.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1) MAYBE SIMPLEFIX LEAK HARDWARE LINUS - - checked ====================================================================== ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS ====================================================================== ActionableScore=1 PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C RealUAF=NO HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN NamespaceScopedPrivilege=UNKNOWN ImportantCandidate=NO ManualReview=NO AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES RequiresHostUID0=UNKNOWN AuthorizationDecisionBypass=NO ProtectedResourceImpact=NONE B4PendingReview=NO B4PendingConfirmed=NO 1. ActionableScore * Raw conservative score: 1 * Conservative score: 1 * Raw paranoid score: 1 * Paranoid score: 1 * No floor or cap was applied. * Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**:: 2. Signal breakdown Positive signals: * +1 Concrete persistent kernel resource/reference leak. `pm_runtime_get_sync()` can leave the usage counter incremented after returning an error, and an `iris_opp_set_rate()` failure can bypass the matching `pm_runtime_put_sync()` operation. Negative signals: * No numerical penalties were applied. Access requirements and control over the required PM or OPP failures are unresolved rather than proven restrictive. Important non-awarded signals: * No UAF, OOB access, stale pointer, double release, or memory corruption is established. * No reliable kernel crash or host-wide resource exhaustion is demonstrated. * No extra resource-exhaustion point was awarded because repeated, attacker-controlled accumulation with material host-wide impact is not established. * No confidentiality, integrity, authorization-bypass, or privilege-escalation primitive exists. * B5-R does not apply because there is no heap OOB write, retry-accumulated index, or later consumption of corrupted state. * B3-PENDING does not apply because no shared-backing write occurs. * B4-PENDING does not apply because the patch balances runtime PM references rather than restoring an authorization decision. * The V32, V33, and V34 networking metadata rules are not relevant. 3. Reachability analysis A local process with access to the Qualcomm Iris media device may exercise operations that reach power-domain enable and disable paths. However, the supplied evidence does not establish that such a process can reliably force `pm_runtime_get_sync()` or `iris_opp_set_rate()` to fail, so complete below-host-admin triggerability remains unresolved. No namespace capability check or namespace-contained trigger chain is shown. Qualcomm Iris hardware and an active driver are prerequisites, but hardware specialization alone does not justify a rarity penalty. There is no race and no remote attack path. Prior device initialization is required, but the evidence does not show that the attacker can independently configure or instantiate the underlying hardware. 4. Primitive and severity interpretation The exact primitive is an unbalanced runtime PM usage reference. On the enable path, `pm_runtime_get_sync()` may increment the usage counter before reporting failure. On the disable path, failure of `iris_opp_set_rate()` previously caused an early return before the corresponding runtime PM put. This is passive resource and power-state bookkeeping corruption, classified as CLASS_C. It is not an active structured-object UAF or fixed stale-storage access. There is no first lifetime-ending release followed by a second operation through a dangling reference. The demonstrated consequence is retention of a runtime PM reference, potentially keeping the device or power domain active and preventing normal runtime suspend. Increased power use or limited device power-management availability is plausible. Kernel panic, system-wide exhaustion, memory corruption, protected-state modification, and privilege escalation are not supported. ImportantCandidate is NO because no Important-preserving corruption, ownership, authorization, or trust-boundary primitive exists. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the issue is a constrained reference leak with no demonstrated strong DoS or unresolved exploitation mechanism. 5. One-sentence report phrase The Qualcomm Iris driver can leak runtime PM usage references on power-management error paths, potentially preventing device suspend or power-down without establishing memory corruption, privilege escalation, or host-wide denial of service. 6. Manual review recommendation NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED The concrete defect is limited to runtime PM reference retention, and the supplied patch provides no evidence of memory corruption, authorization bypass, cross-boundary impact, or reliable host-wide exhaustion. 7. Call-site confidence Call-site confidence: medium ====================================================================== UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY ====================================================================== Patch: media: qcom: iris: fix runtime PM reference leaks [ Upstream Commit: fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 Changed files: drivers/media/platform/qcom/iris/iris_resources.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=fff1ae8d0c8c97668e4cbcc6e1fd2cc740013795 ====================================================================== DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-98437 can be found here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-98437 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: Not available The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 2.5 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).