CVE-2026-93176

Overview

A high‑severity kernel bug in the AMD GPU driver (amdgpu) can leave a dangling pointer when a plane reset fails to allocate new state. If the allocation fails, the driver continues to reference freed memory, potentially causing a use‑after‑free that may crash the kernel or allow privilege escalation.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/amd/display: Fix dangling pointer in plane reset function amdgpu_dm_plane_drm_plane_reset() frees the old state before allocating a new one. If kzalloc() fails, the function returns without updating the state pointer, leaving a dangling pointer to already freed memory. Fix this by allocating the new state first. On allocation failure, the old state remains untouched and the function safely returns. Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with SVACE. [adjust for movement around current amd-staging-drm-next]

Impact

{'confidentiality': 'Potential for privilege escalation if an attacker can trigger the use‑after‑free to execute code with kernel privileges.', 'integrity': 'Kernel memory corruption could lead to arbitrary code execution or data tampering.', 'availability': 'Kernel panic or crash may result in a denial of service for the affected system.'}

Remediation

['Apply the latest kernel update that includes the amdgpu_dm_plane_drm_plane_reset fix.', 'Ensure the AMD GPU driver is updated to the patched version (amdgpu 6.x or later).', 'Verify that the kernel is compiled with mitigations such as KASLR, SMEP, and SMAP.', 'Configure automated kernel crash monitoring (e.g., kdump, systemd‑kdump) to capture and analyze panics.', 'If immediate patching is not possible, consider disabling the affected GPU functionality or using a virtualized environment with a patched kernel.']

Risk context

The vulnerability has a CVSS v3 score of 7.1 (High) and no EPSS data is available. Given its potential to cause kernel crashes or privilege escalation, it should be treated with high urgency, especially on systems that rely on AMD GPUs for graphics or compute.

Affected products

• Linux kernel
• AMD GPU driver (amdgpu)
• amdgpu_dm
• amdgpu DRM subsystem
• AMD GPU firmware