The ipw2100 driver for Intel Wi‑Fi chipsets in the Linux kernel contains a memory leak (CWE‑401) that occurs when the PCI initialization function ipw2100_pci_init_one() fails to enable the device. Memory allocated by ipw2100_alloc_device() is not released on several error paths, allowing the driver to consume RAM until the system is exhausted. An attacker that can trigger this failure will experience a denial of service, with the operating system becoming unstable or crashing as memory resources are depleted.

All Linux kernel releases that contain the ipw2100 driver before the commit that implements the fix are affected. The driver is part of the mainline kernel tree, so any distribution using that kernel code without the patch is vulnerable. The exact version range is not specified, but the patch was applied following the commits linked in the references, meaning any kernel built from sources before those commits will be susceptible.

The CVSS score is not publicly available and the EPSS score is not provided, so the overall severity cannot be precisely quantified. However, because the leak can be triggered only during driver initialization and requires an environment where the PCI enable operation can fail, the attack vector is inferred to be local or privileged. In a typical user scenario the risk is moderate, but in a compromised host or with privileged software that can force a re‑initialization the impact could be high. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog, implying no known active exploitation at the time of the data.