CVE-2026-97532

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's qla2xxx storage driver. When memory allocation fails during device initialization, the driver's error-handling routine fails to clear pointers to memory that has already been released. A local user capable of triggering device initialization failures can cause the driver to free memory twice or access invalid memory pointers, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) via a system crash.

A qla2xxx driver probe failure can leave dangling pointers after resources have already been freed in qla2x00_mem_alloc(). The later qla2x00_mem_free() cleanup can free the same objects again. It can also call dma_pool_free() after the corresponding DMA pool was destroyed and cleared, causing a NULL pointer dereference and kernel crash. For the CVSS the PR:H is used because reliably reaching this error path normally requires administrative control of driver loading, device reprobe, reset, or similar adapter management operations. The issue is not directly network reachable based on the patch. The confirmed impact is local denial of service.

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.