CVE-2026-23258

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

net: liquidio: Initialize netdev pointer before queue setup

In setup_nic_devices(), the netdev is allocated using alloc_etherdev_mq(). However, the pointer to this structure is stored in oct->props[i].netdev only after the calls to netif_set_real_num_rx_queues() and netif_set_real_num_tx_queues().

If either of these functions fails, setup_nic_devices() returns an error without freeing the allocated netdev. Since oct->props[i].netdev is still NULL at this point, the cleanup function liquidio_destroy_nic_device() will fail to find and free the netdev, resulting in a memory leak.

Fix this by initializing oct->props[i].netdev before calling the queue setup functions. This ensures that the netdev is properly accessible for cleanup in case of errors.

Compile tested only. Issue found using a prototype static analysis tool and code review.

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/1d4590fde856cb94bd9a46e795c29d8288c238fc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/926ede0c85e1e57c97d64d9612455267d597bb2c
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a0e57c0b68c9e6f9a8fd7c1167861a5a730eb2f4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be109646cdaecab262f6276303b1763468c94378
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c0ed6c77ec34050971fd0df2a94dfdea66d09331
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c81a8515fb8c8fb5d0dbc21f48337494bf1d60df
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d028147ae06407cb355245db1774793600670169