CVE-2026-43401

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

cpufreq: intelpstate: Fix NULL pointer dereference in updatecpuqosrequest()

The updatecpuqos_request() function attempts to initialize the 'freq' variable by dereferencing 'cpudata' before verifying if the 'policy' is valid.

This issue occurs on systems booted with the "nosmt" parameter, where allcpudata[cpu] is NULL for the SMT sibling threads. As a result, any call to updateqosrequests() will result in a NULL pointer dereference as the code will attempt to access pstate.turbo_freq using the NULL cpudata pointer.

Also, pstate.turbofreq may be updated by intelpstategethwpcap() after initializing the 'freq' variable, so it is better to defer the 'freq' until intelpstategethwp_cap() has been called.

Fix this by deferring the 'freq' assignment until after the policy and driver_data have been validated.

[ rjw: Added one paragraph to the changelog ]