CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-53262

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.12%

2th percentile - higher than 2% of all known CVEs

Summary

A Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's L2TP PPPoL2TP driver. The pppol2tp_ioctl() function accessed the session pointer without proper locking or reference counting, allowing a race condition during copy_from_user(). The fix securely fetches the session reference using an RCU-safe, refcounted helper.

Risk Assessment

An attacker could trigger a race between an ioctl operation and socket close, potentially leading to remote code execution or information disclosure. This compromises system integrity and confidentiality.

Recommendation

Immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix (commit addressing the issue). For production systems, apply the security patch after testing.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: l2tp: pppol2tp: hold reference to session in pppol2tp_ioctl() pppol2tp_ioctl() read sock->sk->sk_user_data directly without any locks or reference counting. If a controllable sleep was induced during copy_from_user() (e.g. via a userfaultfd page fault sleep), a concurrent socket close could trigger pppol2tp_session_close() asynchronously. This frees the l2tp_session structure via the l2tp_session_del_work workqueue. Upon resuming, the ioctl thread dereferences the stale session pointer, resulting in a Use-After-Free (UAF). Fix this by securely fetching the session reference using the RCU-safe, refcounted helper pppol2tp_sock_to_session(sk) on entry. This locks the session's refcount across the sleep. We structured the function to exit via standard err breaks, guaranteeing that l2tp_session_put() is cleanly called on all return paths to drop the reference. To preserve existing behavior we validate the session and its magic signature only for the specific L2TP commands that require it. This ensures that generic/unknown ioctls called on an unconnected socket still return -ENOIOCTLCMD and correctly fall back to generic handlers (e.g. in sock_do_ioctl()).

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