CVE-2026-53378

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

drm/colorop: Fix blob property reference tracking in state lifecycle

The colorop state blob property handling had memory leaks during state duplication, destruction, and reset operations. The implementation failed to follow the established pattern from drm_crtcs handling of DEGAMMA/GAMMA blob properties.

Issues fixed:

• drm_colorop_atomic_destroy_state() was freeing state memory without releasing the blob reference, causing a leak
• drm_colorop_reset() was directly freeing old state with kfree() instead of properly destroying it, leaking blob references
• drm_colorop_cleanup() had duplicate blob cleanup code

Changes:

• Add __drm_atomic_helper_colorop_destroy_state() helper to properly release blob references before freeing state memory
• Update drm_colorop_atomic_destroy_state() to call the helper
• Fix drm_colorop_reset() to use drm_colorop_atomic_destroy_state() for proper cleanup of old state
• Simplify drm_colorop_cleanup() to use the common destruction path

This matches the well-tested pattern used by drm_crtc since 2016 and ensures proper reference counting throughout the state lifecycle.

Co-developed by Claude Sonnet 4.5.

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/235b333e2878d791cee09e1e72f44611a9400114
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/271059f1d9020e9ac967524e319fbbaa22d0475b