CVE-2025-71272

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

most: core: fix resource leak in most_register_interface error paths

The function most_register_interface() did not correctly release resources if it failed early (before registering the device). In these cases, it returned an error code immediately, leaking the memory allocated for the interface.

Fix this by initializing the device early via device_initialize() and calling put_device() on all error paths.

The most_register_interface() is expected to call put_device() on error which frees the resources allocated in the caller. The put_device() either calls release_mdev() or dim2_release(), depending on the caller.

Switch to using device_add() instead of device_register() to handle the split initialization.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1f4c9d8a1021281750c6cda126d6f8a40cc24e71
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2f483f3817fb0e4209ac5de928778b1da0cc8574
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82f42a13e3d7a07a950ee4fa2d4c74843a3e7ace
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a49028a796d7b94f8e3ab9bd34b18f36be235459
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/af0b99b2214a10554adb5b868240d23af6e64e71