CVE-2026-64205

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

i2c: i801: fix hardware state machine corruption in error path

A severe livelock and subsequent Hung Task panic were observed in the i2c-i801 driver during concurrent Fuzzing. The crash is caused by an unconditional hardware register cleanup in the error handling path of i801_access().

When i801_check_pre() fails (e.g., returning -EBUSY because the SMBus controller is actively used by BIOS/ACPI), the kernel does not actually acquire the hardware ownership. However, the code jumps to the out label and executes:

iowrite8(SMBHSTSTS_INUSE_STS | STATUS_FLAGS, SMBHSTSTS(priv));

This forcefully clears the INUSE_STS lock and resets the hardware status flags without owning the controller. Doing so interrupts ongoing BIOS/ACPI transactions and totally corrupts the SMBus hardware state machine.

Consequently, all subsequent i801_access() calls fail at the pre-check stage, triggering an endless stream of SMBus is busy, cant use it! error logs. Over a slow serial console, this printk flood monopolizes the CPU (Console Livelock), starving other processes trying to acquire the mmap_lock down_read semaphore, ultimately triggering the hung task watchdog.

Fix this by moving the out label below the hardware register cleanup. If i801_check_pre() fails, we safely bypass the iowrite8() and only release the software locks (pm_runtime and mutex), strictly adhering to the rule of not releasing resources that were never acquired.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/00904687b9c5527d569d9a1ca72119823e735a61
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/10dd1a736d557e310a77117832874729a0175d57
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bb5133a7d5f3fe5c387770e25f2e00e682ce11ed