CVE-2026-98284
CVE.org · Published
- Record status
- Published
- Identifier year (not publication year)
- 2026
- Source publication
- Source updated
- Imported by cveboard
- Source snapshot
- cve_2026-10-24_midnight_baseline ·
CNA source text (English)
netlink: do not free nlk->groups while lockless readers can use it
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netlink: do not free nlk->groups while lockless readers can use it netlink_realloc_groups() uses krealloc() under netlink_table_grab(). Whenever NLGRPSZ(groups) lands in a different kmalloc bucket, the old bitmap is freed immediately. Two readers of nlk->groups / nlk->ngroups do not hold the netlink table lock: 1) sk_diag_dump_groups(). Hashed (bound) sockets are dumped from the rhashtable walk in __netlink_diag_dump(), which only holds RCU. Only the mc_list part of the dump takes nl_table_lock. 2) netlink_native_seq_show() (/proc/net/netlink), whose walk has been lockless since commit 21e4902aea80 ("netlink: Lockless lookup with RCU grace period in socket release"). Both can read a freed buffer, and sk_diag_dump_groups() can also read past the end of the old (smaller) buffer if it happens to load the old @groups pointer together with the new @ngroups value, copying the result into a NETLINK_DIAG_GROUPS attribute. This is the same class of bug that commit f773608026ee ("netlink: access nlk groups safely in netlink bind and getname") fixed for bind() and getname(); these two readers were missed. Simply grabbing the table lock in sk_diag_dump_groups() is not an option, because it is also called with nl_table_lock already held from the mc_list section of the dump. Make the lockless readers safe instead: - Allocate a new bitmap and free the old one after an RCU grace period, instead of relying on the implicit kfree() done by krealloc(). - Publish @groups before @ngroups, both with release semantics, and have the lockless readers load @ngroups first. A reader can then never pair the new (bigger) size with the old (smaller) buffer, and a reader picking up the new pointer while still seeing the old size is guaranteed to see the initialized bitmap. netlink_realloc_groups() is called from process context (bind() and setsockopt()), so kfree_rcu_mightsleep() can be used, once the table has been released.
Scoped product and version facts
Fix information unknown; no fixed version is derived here. Missing information does not prove that no fix exists.
Exploitation unknown; this catalogue does not assess exploitation.
Linux
- Vendor
- Linux
- Product
- Linux
- Platforms
- Unknown
- Default status
unaffected
| Version (version) | Status (status) | Version scheme (versionType) | Exclusive end (lessThan) | Inclusive end (lessThanOrEqual) | Status changes (at → status) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21e4902aea80ef35afc00ee8d2abdea4f519b7f7 | affected | git | 22f313e211d58a66786c81487c3905fa5d4b2a8f | Unavailable | None listed |
| 21e4902aea80ef35afc00ee8d2abdea4f519b7f7 | affected | git | ceac0de741bfb47ca255eee075257b3bb31f0651 | Unavailable | None listed |
Linux
- Vendor
- Linux
- Product
- Linux
- Platforms
- Unknown
- Default status
affected
| Version (version) | Status (status) | Version scheme (versionType) | Exclusive end (lessThan) | Inclusive end (lessThanOrEqual) | Status changes (at → status) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | affected | Unavailable | Unavailable | Unavailable | None listed |
| 0 | unaffected | semver | 4.0 | Unavailable | None listed |
| 7.2.8 | unaffected | semver | Unavailable | 7.2.* | None listed |
| 7.3 | unaffected | original_commit_for_fix | Unavailable | * | None listed |