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CVE-2026-31669

9.8 critical SSVC exploitation: none Modified

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established The ehash table lookups are lockless and rely on SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU to guarantee socket memory stability during RCU read-side critical sections. Both tcp_prot and tcpv6_prot have their slab caches created with this flag via proto_register(). However, MPTCP's mptcp_subflow_init() copies tcpv6_prot into tcpv6_prot_override during inet_init() (fs_initcall, level 5), before inet6_init() (module_init/device_initcall, level 6) has called proto_register(&tcpv6_prot). At that point, tcpv6_prot.slab is still NULL, so tcpv6_prot_override.slab remains NULL permanently. This causes MPTCP v6 subflow child sockets to be allocated via kmalloc (falling into kmalloc-4k) instead of the TCPv6 slab cache. The kmalloc-4k cache lacks SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, so when these sockets are freed without SOCK_RCU_FREE (which is cleared for child sockets by design), the memory can be immediately reused. Concurrent ehash lookups under rcu_read_lock can then access freed memory, triggering a slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established. Fix this by splitting the IPv6-specific initialization out of mptcp_subflow_init() into a new mptcp_subflow_v6_init(), called from mptcp_proto_v6_init() before protocol registration. This ensures tcpv6_prot_override.slab correctly inherits the SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU slab cache.

Fix

Patch, vendor advisory and mitigation references on NVD 7

Every line above is quoted from NVD, CISA, Microsoft, the vendor's own advisory or DISA; nothing is generated.

Change history 1

  1. First seenCVSS 9.8 · linuxNVD modified 2026-10-15 02:19

Affected (CPE criteria) 9

  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:5.12:-:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc3:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc4:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc5:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:*
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:7.0:rc7:*:*:*:*:*:*

References 10