CVE-2026-100072

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) subsystem. This vulnerability can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) or system instability due to unsafe reference handling during platform device creation. Because the kernel fails to acquire a reference to the physical device node, the device could be freed while still being accessed. A local user could trigger this use-after-free condition to crash the system.

A moderate-severity use-after-free flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ACPI subsystem in the platform device creation path. The functions acpi_platform_fill_resource() and acpi_create_platform_device() used the physical device returned by acpi_get_first_physical_node() without acquiring a reference to it, so in theory that device could be freed while it was still being accessed. A local user able to trigger ACPI platform device creation could exploit this race condition to crash the kernel, resulting in a local denial of service. Red Hat rates this flaw Moderate impact with a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H); there is no impact to confidentiality or integrity. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in that stream. The affected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 through 10 (kernel and kernel-rt), Red Hat In-Vehicle OS, and OpenShift Container Platform (RHEL CoreOS 8 and 9) streams do contain the vulnerable code; however, because this is a theoretical race condition that requires precise timing during ACPI device lifecycle activity, the practical impact is limited to a local denial of service, so the fix is deferred to a future update of these streams rather than being delivered as an immediate security update. The residual risk of deferral is that an attacker with local access who can reliably win the race could trigger a kernel crash and deny service to the system.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.