CVE-2026-45996

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel, specifically within the spi: imx driver. This vulnerability, known as a use-after-free, occurs when the system attempts to access memory that has already been released, leading to unpredictable behavior. A local attacker could potentially exploit this issue to cause the system to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or in some cases, gain elevated privileges.

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity because triggering the underlying use-after-free requires local access to execute device deregistration or driver unbinding, restricting the blast radius primarily to a local denial of service. The affected code resides in the NXP i.MX SPI controller driver, which is relevant only to systems deployed on specialized i.MX system-on-chip architectures, such as automotive or embedded platforms. Standard enterprise server installations do not utilize this hardware driver and remain unaffected under default configurations.

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.