CVE-2026-72004 wifi: mac80211: fix memory leak in ieee80211_register_hw()
A memory leak in the Linux kernel's mac80211 Wi-Fi subsystem can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-72004?
CVE-2026-72004 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 15 Aug 2026. 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:
wifi: mac80211: fix memory leak in ieee80211_register_hw()
If kmemdup() fails while copying supported band structures, the error path jumps to fail_rate. This skips rate_control_deinitialize() and leaks the initialized local->rate_ctrl.
Fix this by adding a fail_band label that shares the rate-control cleanup path before falling through to the remaining teardown.
The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing v6.13-rc1. The tool is still under development and is not yet publicly available. Manual inspection confirms that the bug is still present in v7.1-rc7.
An x86_64 allyesconfig build showed no new warnings. As we do not have a suitable mac80211 device/driver combination to test with, no runtime testing was able to be performed.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72004?
How do I fix CVE-2026-72004?
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-2026-72004 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72004 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-72004, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72004, GHSA-3wcv-wrgc-m95c, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72004.