CVE-2026-80577

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's drm/panthor driver. When the panthor_fw_load_section_entry() function processes zero-sized firmware sections, it can leave a memory pointer uninitialized. Subsequent operations that attempt to access this uninitialized memory can lead to a null pointer dereference, potentially causing a system crash (Denial of Service).

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's drm/panthor driver, which supports Arm Mali CSF-based GPUs. When panthor_fw_load_section_entry() processes a zero-sized (empty VA range) firmware section, it skips buffer object creation, so if such a section is added to the firmware section list, section->mem is left as NULL. Later firmware reload and device unplug paths iterate over all firmware sections and dereference section->mem, resulting in a NULL pointer dereference that can crash the kernel and cause a local denial of service. The flaw has no confidentiality or integrity impact; Red Hat rates its impact as Low, consistent with the availability-only RH CVSS:3.1 base score of 5.5 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), which reflects the high availability impact of a kernel crash reachable from a local context. All currently assessed Red Hat products are not affected by this flaw: the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 kernel streams (including the kernel, kernel-rt, and kernel-ivos-qualcomm components, as well as RHI VOS streams) are recorded as not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in the shipped Red Hat kernel builds. Since no Red Hat products are affected, no update is required to remediate this flaw in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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.