CVE-2024-26618 arm64/sme: Always exit sme_alloc() early with existing storage

What is CVE-2024-26618?

CVE-2024-26618 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 29 Feb 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

arm64/sme: Always exit sme_alloc() early with existing storage

When sme_alloc() is called with existing storage and we are not flushing we will always allocate new storage, both leaking the existing storage and corrupting the state. Fix this by separating the checks for flushing and for existing storage as we do for SVE.

Callers that reallocate (eg, due to changing the vector length) should call sme_free() themselves.

Weakness: CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-26618?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-26618?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2024-26618 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-26618 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2024-26618, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-26618, GHSA-6fvm-vq2v-pwgq, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2024-26618, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26618.