CVE-2026-98781 drm/mediatek: Fix pdev reference leak in mtk_drm_bind()
A reference leak in the Mediatek DRM driver 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-2026-98781?
CVE-2026-98781 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 18 Oct 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/mediatek: Fix pdev reference leak in mtk_drm_bind()
When the device is not the mmsys master, mtk_drm_bind() returns early after taking a reference on the disp-mutex device via of_find_device_by_node(), without ever dropping it: mtk_drm_unbind() only puts mutex_dev for the master. Drop the reference before returning from the non-master path.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-98781?
How do I fix CVE-2026-98781?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-98781 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-98781 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-110465, BELL-CVE-2026-98781, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98781, GHSA-3r3h-q9jp-47gf, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98781.