CVE-2026-63929

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

iio: buffer: Fix DMA fence leak in iio_buffer_enqueue_dmabuf()

iio_buffer_enqueue_dmabuf() allocates a struct iio_dma_fence (104 bytes, kmalloc-128) via kmalloc_obj()+dma_fence_init(), which sets the initial kref to 1. It then calls dma_resv_add_fence() which takes a second reference (kref=2), and stores a raw pointer in block->fence.

On the success path the function returns without calling dma_fence_put() to release the initial reference, so every buffer enqueue permanently leaks one kmalloc-128 allocation.

The iio_buffer_cleanup() work item only releases the temporary reference taken during completion signalling by iio_buffer_signal_dmabuf_done(); the initial reference from dma_fence_init() is never released.

With four iio_rwdev instances at 240kHz and 512 samples per buffer, this produces ~1875 kmalloc-128 allocations per second matching the observed slab growth exactly. A test with ftrace confirmed that the dma_fence_destroy event was never triggered.

Fix by calling dma_fence_put() after dma_resv_add_fence(), transferring ownership of the fence to the DMA reservation object. The DMA fence then gets properly discarded after being signalled.

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/3412a95afaa5d3262008dfc34f3c7be33d8151dc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9678aeed8b77d495a417dd057d479f3733094019
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/96cdeaba6a008503455b78a9641c05c2a886a7ec
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a093999355084bdbfe6e97f1dd232e58a1525f0b