Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-46021

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: thermal: core: Fix thermal zone governor cleanup issues If thermal_zone_device_register_with_trips() fails after adding a thermal governor to the thermal zone being registered, the governor is not removed from it as appropriate which may lead to a memory leak. In turn, thermal_zone_device_unregister() calls thermal_set_governor() without acquiring the thermal zone lock beforehand which may race with a governor update via sysfs and may lead to a use-after-free in that case. Address these issues by adding two thermal_set_governor() calls, one to thermal_release() to remove the governor from the given thermal zone, and one to the thermal zone registration error path to cover failures preceding the thermal zone device registration.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (5.2th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 5th percentile — 5.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-46021: held from 0.001 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-46021?
CVE-2026-46021 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux, classified under Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2026-05-27.
How severe is CVE-2026-46021?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.