CVE-2026-72452 drm/i915: clear CRTC color blob pointers after dropping refs

What is CVE-2026-72452?

CVE-2026-72452 is a high-severity use after free 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:

drm/i915: clear CRTC color blob pointers after dropping refs

intel_crtc_put_color_blobs() drops the CRTC color blob references, but leaves the corresponding pointers unchanged.

This can matter in intel_crtc_prepare_cleared_state(), which frees the old CRTC hw state before calling intel_dp_tunnel_atomic_clear_stream_bw(). The latter can fail while looking up the DP tunnel group state, for example with -EDEADLK.

If that happens, the function returns without completing the cleared state preparation. The failed atomic state will then be cleared by the atomic core and intel_crtc_free_hw_state() can be called again for the same state, dropping the same blob references again.

Clear the blob pointers after dropping the references so repeated cleanup of the same CRTC hw state is safe.

(cherry picked from commit d5005addb5f68e8a0edce249506757bdc9e3d8c8)

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72452?

How do I fix CVE-2026-72452?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2026-72452 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72452 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

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

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-72452, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72452, GHSA-fg7v-qr3p-44mc, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72452.