published September 15, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
chardev: fix error handling in cdev_device_add()
While doing fault injection test, I got the following report:
------------[ cut here ]------------
kobject: '(null)' (0000000039956980): is not initialized, yet kobject_put() is being called.
WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 6306 at kobject_put+0x23d/0x4e0
CPU: 3 PID: 6306 Comm: 283 Tainted: G W 6.1.0-rc2-00005-g307c1086d7c9 #1253
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.13.0-1ubuntu1.1 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:kobject_put+0x23d/0x4e0
Call Trace:
<TASK>
cdev_device_add+0x15e/0x1b0
__iio_device_register+0x13b4/0x1af0 [industrialio]
__devm_iio_device_register+0x22/0x90 [industrialio]
max517_probe+0x3d8/0x6b4 [max517]
i2c_device_probe+0xa81/0xc00
When device_add() is injected fault and returns error, if dev->devt is not set,
cdev_add() is not called, cdev_del() is not needed. Fix this by checking dev->devt
in error path.