From: Guangshuo Li <lgs201920130244@gmail.com>
To: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>,
Russ Weight <russ.weight@linux.dev>,
Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>,
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>,
Tianfei zhang <tianfei.zhang@intel.com>,
driver-core@lists.linux.dev, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Guangshuo Li <lgs201920130244@gmail.com>, stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH] firmware_loader: fix device reference leak in firmware_upload_register()
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:51:09 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260415085109.3267323-1-lgs201920130244@gmail.com> (raw)
firmware_upload_register()
-> fw_create_instance()
-> device_initialize()
After fw_create_instance() succeeds, the lifetime of the embedded struct
device is expected to be managed through the device core reference
counting, since fw_create_instance() has already called
device_initialize().
In firmware_upload_register(), if alloc_lookup_fw_priv() fails after
fw_create_instance() succeeds, the code reaches free_fw_sysfs and frees
fw_sysfs directly instead of releasing the device reference with
put_device(). This may leave the reference count of the embedded struct
device unbalanced, resulting in a refcount leak.
The issue was identified by a static analysis tool I developed and
confirmed by manual review. Fix this by using put_device(fw_dev) in the
failure path and letting fw_dev_release() handle the final cleanup,
instead of freeing the instance directly from the error path.
Fixes: 97730bbb242c ("firmware_loader: Add firmware-upload support")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Guangshuo Li <lgs201920130244@gmail.com>
---
drivers/base/firmware_loader/sysfs_upload.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/drivers/base/firmware_loader/sysfs_upload.c b/drivers/base/firmware_loader/sysfs_upload.c
index f59a7856934c..6b701185dcb6 100644
--- a/drivers/base/firmware_loader/sysfs_upload.c
+++ b/drivers/base/firmware_loader/sysfs_upload.c
@@ -366,7 +366,8 @@ firmware_upload_register(struct module *module, struct device *parent,
return fw_upload;
free_fw_sysfs:
- kfree(fw_sysfs);
+ put_device(fw_dev);
+ goto exit_module_put;
free_fw_upload_priv:
kfree(fw_upload_priv);
--
2.43.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-04-15 8:51 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-04-15 8:51 Guangshuo Li [this message]
2026-04-17 23:22 ` [PATCH] firmware_loader: fix device reference leak in firmware_upload_register() Russ Weight
2026-04-18 6:28 ` Guangshuo Li
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