Linux Kernel CVE-2026-46171

The vulnerability resides in the RISC-V KVM subsystem of the Linux kernel (arch/riscv/kvm/), introduced when RISC-V vector extension support was added to KVM guests at commit 0f4b82579716. CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime) precisely describes the root cause: an error path exits the function after the first kzalloc succeeds but before the second does, without invoking kfree on the already-allocated guest_context.vector.datap buffer. The RISC-V V (vector) extension requires separate vector register state buffers for both the guest and host CPU contexts during virtualization, hence two allocations. CPE cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* confirms this affects the upstream Linux kernel across the vulnerable version range. The 'Information Disclosure' tag in the source data conflicts with the CVSS C:N metric and the description, which describes only a memory leak; that tag appears to be a mis-classification.