What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-26618: arm64/sme: Always exit sme_alloc() early with existing storage

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2024-03-11 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-770

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: arm64/sme: Always exit sme_alloc() early with existing storage When sme_alloc() is called with existing storage and we are not flushing we will always allocate new storage, both leaking the existing storage and corrupting the state. Fix this by separating the checks for flushing and for existing storage as we do for SVE. Callers that reallocate (eg, due to changing the vector length) should call sme_free() themselves.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 6.5 before 6.6.15; from 6.7 before 6.7.3 — fixed in 6.6.15, 6.7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.6.15, 6.7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/569156e4fa347237f8fa2a7e935d860109c55ac4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/814af6b4e6000e574e74d92197190edf07cc3680
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/dc7eb8755797ed41a0d1b5c0c39df3c8f401b3d9
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f6421555dbd7cb3d4d70b69f33f998aaeca1e3b5
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/569156e4fa347237f8fa2a7e935d860109c55ac4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/814af6b4e6000e574e74d92197190edf07cc3680
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/dc7eb8755797ed41a0d1b5c0c39df3c8f401b3d9
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/08/msg00010.html

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