CVE-2022-50838

net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()

published December 30, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
19.8
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()

Changheon Lee reported TCP socket leaks, with a nice repro.

It seems we leak TCP sockets with the following sequence:

1) SOF_TIMESTAMPING_TX_ACK is enabled on the socket.

Each ACK will cook an skb put in error queue, from __skb_tstamp_tx().

__skb_tstamp_tx() is using skb_clone(), unless

SOF_TIMESTAMPING_OPT_TSONLY was also requested.

2) If the application is also using MSG_ZEROCOPY, then we put in the

error queue cloned skbs that had a struct ubuf_info attached to them.

Whenever an struct ubuf_info is allocated, sock_zerocopy_alloc()

does a sock_hold().

As long as the cloned skbs are still in sk_error_queue,

socket refcount is kept elevated.

3) Application closes the socket, while error queue is not empty.

Since tcp_close() no longer purges the socket error queue,

we might end up with a TCP socket with at least one skb in

error queue keeping the socket alive forever.

This bug can be (ab)used to consume all kernel memory

and freeze the host.

We need to purge the error queue, with proper synchronization

against concurrent writers.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00284 · 19.8th percentile
Published
2025-12-30T12:10Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 30 DEC 12:10Z
    net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()
    cvelistv5