CVE-2026-64173

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel. An issue in the tracing subsystem's memory management could lead to incorrect deallocation of tracing map elements. Specifically, the system attempts to free memory that was never successfully allocated, which can result in memory corruption. This vulnerability may lead to system instability or a denial of service (DoS) condition.

A tracing_map element cleanup path can call map ops elt_free even when the matching elt_alloc callback did not complete successfully. This can expose the callback to a partially initialized element after an allocation failure and may lead to invalid cleanup, NULL pointer dereference, warning, or kernel crash. For the CVSS the PR:L value is used for the paranoid score because some systems may delegate tracing access to a non root local user or to a tracing service account, although typical deployments require administrator level tracing privileges. The issue is not network reachable and requires local access to tracing control paths plus a failure condition in element allocation. Impact is at least local denial of service via kernel crash and in worst case may allow limited confidentiality or integrity impact due to memory management misuse and should be reviewed manually.

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 don't meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.