CVE-2026-98197

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's w83791d hardware monitoring driver. This vulnerability allows a local user to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by triggering a kernel crash. During driver removal, the driver fails to unregister optional sysfs interface files, leaving them accessible after the underlying device data has been released. An unprivileged or local user interacting with these leftover files causes the kernel to access freed memory, resulting in a use-after-free condition.

This flaw is rated as having Moderate severity rather than Important because exploitation requires local access, specific hardware monitoring hardware, and an uncommon operational state where the driver is unbound during active sysfs access. Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not load the w83791d kernel module by default unless the corresponding Winbond hardware sensor is physically present on the system. Under vulnerable conditions, triggering the dangling sysfs access can cause a kernel panic, resulting in a 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.