CVE-2026-72005 wifi: rt2x00: avoid full teardown before work setup in probe
A flaw in the Linux kernel rt2x00 WiFi driver causes a crash when probe fails early, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-72005?
CVE-2026-72005 is a high-severity 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: rt2x00: avoid full teardown before work setup in probe
rt2x00lib_probe_dev() uses the full rt2x00lib_remove_dev() teardown for all probe failures. However, drv_data allocation and workqueue allocation can fail before intf_work, autowakeup_work and sleep_work have been initialized.
Do not enter the full remove path until the probe has reached the point where those work items are set up. Return directly for drv_data allocation failure, and use a small early cleanup path for workqueue allocation failure.
This issue was found by our static analysis tool and then confirmed by manual review of rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev(). The early probe exits should not call a common teardown path that assumes the later work setup has already completed.
A QEMU PoC forced alloc_ordered_workqueue() to fail before the work initializers are reached. The resulting fail path entered rt2x00lib_remove_dev(), and DEBUG_OBJECTS reported invalid work drains with rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev() in the stack.
Weakness: CWE-404
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72005?
How do I fix CVE-2026-72005?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-72005 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72005 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-72005, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72005, GHSA-pvvm-r88x-762c, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72005.