CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-53175

CriticalCVSS 9.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.33%

24th percentile — higher than 24% of all known CVEs

Summary

A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's IP fragment reassembly mechanism. During network namespace teardown, fqdir_pre_exit() flushes fragment queues without resetting q->fragments_tail and q->last_run_head pointers, which still point to freed skbs. A fragment that obtained the queue before the flush can dereference these pointers upon resumption, causing memory corruption.

Risk Assessment

An attacker in a network namespace could exploit this vulnerability for privilege escalation or denial of service (DoS) by deliberately delaying packet fragments during netns teardown. The issue affects IPv4, IPv6, nf_conntrack_reasm6, and 6lowpan reassembly.

Recommendation

Apply the Linux kernel patch that resets rb_fragments, fragments_tail, and last_run_head pointers in inet_frag_queue_flush(). Update to a kernel version containing this fix as soon as possible.

Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: inet: frags: fix use-after-free caused by the fqdir_pre_exit() flush On netns teardown, fqdir_pre_exit() walks the fqdir rhashtable and flushes every fragment queue that is not yet complete using inet_frag_queue_flush(). That helper frees all the skbs queued on the fragment queue but does not set INET_FRAG_COMPLETE, and leaves q->fragments_tail and q->last_run_head pointing at the freed skbs. The queue itself stays in the rhashtable. fqdir_pre_exit() first lowers high_thresh to 0 to stop new queue lookups, but it cannot stop a fragment that already obtained the queue through inet_frag_find() earlier and stalled just before taking the queue lock. Once that fragment resumes after the flush and takes the queue lock, it passes the INET_FRAG_COMPLETE check and then dereferences the freed fragments_tail. inet_frag_queue_insert() reads FRAG_CB() and ->len of that pointer and, on the append path, writes ->next_frag, causing a slab use-after-free. IPv6, nf_conntrack_reasm6 and 6lowpan reassembly share the same flush path and are affected as well. Reset rb_fragments, fragments_tail and last_run_head in inet_frag_queue_flush() so a flushed queue no longer points at the freed skbs. A fragment that resumes after the flush and takes the queue lock then finds an empty queue and starts a new run instead of dereferencing the freed fragments_tail. ip_frag_reinit() already performed this reset after its own flush, so drop the now duplicate code there.

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