CVE-2026-72005
NVD analysis in progress
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: rt2x00: avoid full teardown before work setup in probe rt2x00lib_probe_dev() uses the full rt2x00lib_remove_dev() teardown for all probe failures. However, drv_data allocation and workqueue allocation can fail before intf_work, autowakeup_work and sleep_work have been initialized. Do not enter the full remove path until the probe has reached the point where those work items are set up. Return directly for drv_data allocation failure, and use a small early cleanup path for workqueue allocation failure. This issue was found by our static analysis tool and then confirmed by manual review of rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev(). The early probe exits should not call a common teardown path that assumes the later work setup has already completed. A QEMU PoC forced alloc_ordered_workqueue() to fail before the work initializers are reached. The resulting fail path entered rt2x00lib_remove_dev(), and DEBUG_OBJECTS reported invalid work drains with rt2x00lib_probe_dev() and rt2x00lib_remove_dev() in the stack.
What this means
- Exposure
- Exploitable with local access to the machine, with an ordinary user account and with no action from the victim.
- Impact
- An attacker can read sensitive data, modify or destroy data and take the service offline.
- Likelihood
- Its EPSS score stays low: nothing points to imminent exploitation, which is no reason to leave it unpatched.
What to doFold into the next patch cycle.
Read automatically from the CVSS vector, the weakness type (CWE) and the EPSS score. The technical description above remains the one published by NIST.