CVE-2026-72182

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's power supply charger-manager component. A reference count (refcount) leak occurs within the is_full_charged() function. This happens when a reference to the fuel gauge power supply is obtained but not properly released if a specific voltage check succeeds. This resource leak could potentially lead to system instability or a denial of service.

A moderate-impact reference count (refcount) leak was found in the Linux kernel's power supply charger-manager driver (drivers/power/supply/charger-manager.c). In is_full_charged(), the reference to the fuel-gauge power supply obtained via power_supply_get_by_name() is not released with power_supply_put() when the full-battery voltage check (uV >= desc->fullbatt_uV) succeeds, so the reference leaks each time that check passes. A local attacker able to trigger repeated charger-manager battery-status evaluations could use this resource leak to exhaust kernel memory resources and cause a denial of service (system instability or crash). Red Hat rates this flaw Moderate severity with a CVSS:3.1 base score of 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), reflecting the local attack vector and the availability-only impact. The vulnerable code was introduced upstream in Linux kernel 5.10. All Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 streams (including the kernel and kernel-rt components) and all Red Hat In-Vehicle OS 2 streams (kernel and kernel-ivos-qualcomm components) are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in the shipped kernels, so no Red Hat product update is required for this issue.

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.