CVEvulnerability
CVE-2026-64205
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Analyzed
- Published
- 2026-07-20
- Last modified
- 2026-08-17
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 5.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
i2c: i801: fix hardware state machine corruption in error path
A severe livelock and subsequent Hung Task panic were observed in the
i2c-i801 driver during concurrent Fuzzing. The crash is caused by an
unconditional hardware register cleanup in the error handling path of
i801_access().
When i801_check_pre() fails (e.g., returning -EBUSY because the SMBus
controller is actively used by BIOS/ACPI), the kernel does not actually
acquire the hardware ownership. However, the code jumps to the 'out'
label and executes:
iowrite8(SMBHSTSTS_INUSE_STS | STATUS_FLAGS, SMBHSTSTS(priv));
This forcefully clears the INUSE_STS lock and resets the hardware status
flags without owning the controller. Doing so interrupts ongoing BIOS/ACPI
transactions and totally corrupts the SMBus hardware state machine.
Consequently, all subsequent i801_access() calls fail at the pre-check
stage, triggering an endless stream of "SMBus is busy, can't use it!"
error logs. Over a slow serial console, this printk flood monopolizes
the CPU (Console Livelock), starving other processes trying to acquire
the mmap_lock down_read semaphore, ultimately triggering the hung task
watchdog.
Fix this by moving the 'out' label below the hardware register cleanup.
If i801_check_pre() fails, we safely bypass the iowrite8() and only
release the software locks (pm_runtime and mutex), strictly adhering to
the rule of not releasing resources that were never acquired.
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.3 < 6.6.148)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.7 < 6.12.101)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.13 < 6.18.39)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.19 < 7.1.4)
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/00904687b9c5527d569d9a1ca72119823e735a61 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/10dd1a736d557e310a77117832874729a0175d57 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2ef69871b313aa0f02182795f5e0f5aa455f203c Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bb5133a7d5f3fe5c387770e25f2e00e682ce11ed Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ef5a347532932f58748dad485c15039f5168c377 Patch