Critical · published April 24, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established
The ehash table lookups are lockless and rely on
SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU to guarantee socket memory stability
during RCU read-side critical sections. Both tcp_prot and
tcpv6_prot have their slab caches created with this flag
via proto_register().
However, MPTCP's mptcp_subflow_init() copies tcpv6_prot into
tcpv6_prot_override during inet_init() (fs_initcall, level 5),
before inet6_init() (module_init/device_initcall, level 6) has
called proto_register(&tcpv6_prot). At that point,
tcpv6_prot.slab is still NULL, so tcpv6_prot_override.slab
remains NULL permanently.
This causes MPTCP v6 subflow child sockets to be allocated via
kmalloc (falling into kmalloc-4k) instead of the TCPv6 slab
cache. The kmalloc-4k cache lacks SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, so
when these sockets are freed without SOCK_RCU_FREE (which is
cleared for child sockets by design), the memory can be
immediately reused. Concurrent ehash lookups under
rcu_read_lock can then access freed memory, triggering a
slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established.
Fix this by splitting the IPv6-specific initialization out of
mptcp_subflow_init() into a new mptcp_subflow_v6_init(), called
from mptcp_proto_v6_init() before protocol registration. This
ensures tcpv6_prot_override.slab correctly inherits the
SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU slab cache.
| Product | Versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 5.12.1, < 5.15.203 | 5.15.203 |
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 5.16, < 6.1.169 | 6.1.169 |
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 6.2, < 6.6.135 | 6.6.135 |
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 6.7, < 6.12.82 | 6.12.82 |
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 6.13, < 6.18.23 | 6.18.23 |
| linux/linux_kernel | ≥ 6.19, < 6.19.13 | 6.19.13 |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |
| linux/linux_kernel | all versions | — |