CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-53239

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.10%

1th percentile - higher than 1% of all known CVEs

Summary

A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's XFRM policy mechanism. The bug occurs in xfrm_policy_bysel_ctx() when deleting a policy, as the xfrm_policy_lock is released before pruning the inexact bin, leading to a race condition and use of freed memory.

Risk Assessment

An attacker could exploit this flaw to escalate privileges or cause a denial of service (DoS) by manipulating XFRM policies, threatening system stability and security.

Recommendation

It is recommended to immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix, which moves the bin pruning operation before releasing the lock.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfrm: policy: fix use-after-free on inexact bin in xfrm_policy_bysel_ctx() Fix the race by pruning the bin while still holding xfrm_policy_lock, before dropping it. Use __xfrm_policy_inexact_prune_bin() directly since the lock is already held. The wrapper xfrm_policy_inexact_prune_bin() becomes unused and is removed. Race: CPU0 (XFRM_MSG_DELPOLICY) CPU1 (XFRM_MSG_NEWSPDINFO) ========================== ========================== xfrm_policy_bysel_ctx(): spin_lock_bh(xfrm_policy_lock) bin = xfrm_policy_inexact_lookup() __xfrm_policy_unlink(pol) spin_unlock_bh(xfrm_policy_lock) xfrm_policy_kill(ret) // wide window, lock not held xfrm_hash_rebuild(): spin_lock_bh(xfrm_policy_lock) __xfrm_policy_inexact_flush(): kfree_rcu(bin) // bin freed spin_unlock_bh(xfrm_policy_lock) xfrm_policy_inexact_prune_bin(bin) // UAF: bin is freed

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS