CVE-2026-89741 Affecting linux-6.12 package, versions <6.12.111-1~deb12u1


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on default assessment until relevant scores are available.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.17% (6th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIAN12-LINUX612-20506313
  • published5 Oct 2026
  • disclosed11 Sept 2026

Introduced: 11 Sep 2026

NewCVE-2026-89741  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Debian:12 linux-6.12 to version 6.12.111-1~deb12u1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream linux-6.12 package and not the linux-6.12 package as distributed by Debian. See How to fix? for Debian:12 relevant fixed versions and status.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

Revert "media: v4l2-dev: fix error handling in __video_register_device()"

This reverts commit 2a934fdb01db6458288fc9386d3d8ceba6dd551a.

The intentions of that patch were good, but it doesn't work.

The idea is that if device_register fails, you have to do a put_device to let the ref counter release resources.

However, the V4L2 API says that if video_register_device() fails, then you have to call video_device_release(), which kfree()s the video_device struct.

But the put_device() will already have freed the struct, so you end up in a double-free scenario.

There is not really a good way of fixing this without breaking video_register_device() into two parts, one that initializes everything, and one that does the actual device_register, and then converting all V4L2 drivers to this new model.

That is a massive job, and it is very unlikely that device_register will fail.

So rather than ending up in a double-free scenario, just revert this patch, and in that case we'll have a small memory leak. Which is a lot more robust.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1