The vulnerability is a use‑after‑free that occurs in the EDAC/altera driver’s error paths within the Linux kernel. During device addition or port setup, the driver prematurely frees the dci structure before the managed IRQ handlers are unregistered. If an interrupt fires between the free and the unregistration, the kernel can dereference the freed memory, resulting in a crash.

All Linux kernel releases that ship the EDAC/altera driver without the three patch commits (865f3bdebbc9b34012358c377c9b15154f95f33b, 87364b19b3fe4e6dbf88d6acf6db4ec87e7dfbba, eef3b67f9c6782127163b631c9043011a68016e2) are potentially affected. Because the driver code is part of the kernel, any kernel containing the unmodified code paths is at risk.

The CVSS score of 7.4 indicates a high severity risk, while the EPSS score of less than 1% suggests exploitation opportunities are unlikely under normal conditions. The defect resides in privileged kernel code, and an attacker who can trigger a targeted interrupt during the vulnerable window could cause a kernel panic. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog, but its potential to crash the kernel makes timely mitigation important.