CVE-2025-39852
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk4th percentile - higher than 4% of all known CVEs
Summary
A memory leak exists in the Linux kernel's TCP-AO failure handling for IPv6. When tcp_ao_copy_all_matching() fails in tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock(), the function exits without releasing socket resources, causing a memory leak. The fix aligns error handling in tcp_v4_syn_recv_sock and tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock to ensure proper socket cleanup.
Risk Assessment
The memory leak can gradually exhaust system resources and destabilize network services, especially under high volumes of TCP connections with TCP-AO enabled. In extreme cases, it may lead to denial of service (DoS).
Recommendation
Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix for CVE-2025-39852. If immediate patching is not possible, consider disabling TCP-AO for IPv6 until the patch is applied.
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Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/tcp: Fix socket memory leak in TCP-AO failure handling for IPv6 When tcp_ao_copy_all_matching() fails in tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock() it just exits the function. This ends up causing a memory-leak: unreferenced object 0xffff0000281a8200 (size 2496): comm "softirq", pid 0, jiffies 4295174684 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 7f 00 00 06 7f 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 cb a8 88 13 ................ 0a 00 03 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...a............ backtrace (crc 5ebdbe15): kmemleak_alloc+0x44/0xe0 kmem_cache_alloc_noprof+0x248/0x470 sk_prot_alloc+0x48/0x120 sk_clone_lock+0x38/0x3b0 inet_csk_clone_lock+0x34/0x150 tcp_create_openreq_child+0x3c/0x4a8 tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock+0x1c0/0x620 tcp_check_req+0x588/0x790 tcp_v6_rcv+0x5d0/0xc18 ip6_protocol_deliver_rcu+0x2d8/0x4c0 ip6_input_finish+0x74/0x148 ip6_input+0x50/0x118 ip6_sublist_rcv+0x2fc/0x3b0 ipv6_list_rcv+0x114/0x170 __netif_receive_skb_list_core+0x16c/0x200 netif_receive_skb_list_internal+0x1f0/0x2d0 This is because in tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock (and the IPv4 counterpart), when exiting upon error, inet_csk_prepare_forced_close() and tcp_done() need to be called. They make sure the newsk will end up being correctly free'd. tcp_v4_syn_recv_sock() makes this very clear by having the put_and_exit label that takes care of things. So, this patch here makes sure tcp_v4_syn_recv_sock and tcp_v6_syn_recv_sock have similar error-handling and thus fixes the leak for TCP-AO.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

