CVE-2026-46210

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

media: iris: fix use-after-free of fmt_src during MBPF check

During concurrency testing, multiple instances can run in parallel, and each instance uses its own inst->lock while the core->lock protects the list of active instances. The race happens because these locks cover different scopes, inst->lock protects only the internals of a single instance, while the Macro Blocks Per Frame (MBPF) checker walks the core list under core->lock and reads fields like fmt_src->width and fmt_src->height. At the same time, iris_close() may free fmt_src and fmt_dst under inst->lock while the instance is still present in the core list. This allows a situation where the MBPF checker, still iterating through the core list, reaches an instance whose fmt_src was already freed by another thread and ends up dereferencing a dangling pointer, resulting in a use-after-free. This happens because the MBPF checker assumes that any instance in the core list is fully valid, but the freeing of fmt_src and fmt_dst without removing the instance from the core list is not correct.

The correct ordering is to defer freeing fmt_src and fmt_dst until after the instance has been removed from the core list and all teardown under the core lock has completed, ensuring that no dangling pointers are ever exposed during MBPF checks.

Weakness

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory “belongs” to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d9593ad1a58c5acc3e5fa2a48222bb7632e6812
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/494ffd1712a588e590e6b1e9f876a8c8b24a9180