Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-98953
Go to dashboardIn the Linux kernel's devlink subsystem, a reference taken for queued notify work is leaked when the work is already pending, so each register and unregister cycle of a nested devlink instance leaks a devlink_rel object and its index. The sources describe a resource leak; they do not state a code execution or privilege escalation path.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Systems running a Linux kernel with devlink support and nested devlink instances, typically hosts with managed network hardware or devlink-capable NICs that create and destroy nested instances. Systems without devlink use or nested instances are unlikely to be exercised by this leak. The sources do not state the exact exposure.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
uname -r and compare against the fixed kernel builds listed in the NVD entryEach row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
devlink: fix devlink_rel reference leak when notify work is pending
devlink_rel_nested_in_notify_work_schedule() takes a reference on the devlink_rel for the notify work and then queues the work, ignoring the return value of schedule_delayed_work(). If the work is already pending, nothing new is queued, the work runs only once and drops only one reference, so the extra one is leaked together with the devlink_rel and its index in devlink_rels.
This is easy to hit. devl_register() of a nested instance queues the work, and if the instance is unregistered before the work has run, devlink_rel_put() queues it again while it is still pending. The work also keeps rescheduling itself for as long as the parent devlink lock cannot be taken, which widens the window. Registering and unregistering a nested devlink instance 100 times while holding the parent lock leaks all 100 devlink_rel objects.
The reschedule path in devlink_rel_nested_in_notify_work() has the same problem: if the work was queued again while it was running, the reference it holds is never dropped.
Drop the reference in both places when the work was already pending. The pending work holds its own reference, so this can not be the last one.
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