High · published July 25, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
binder: fix UAF in binder_thread_release()
When a thread exits, binder_thread_release() walks its transaction stack
to clear the t->from and t->to_proc that correspond with the exiting
thread. However, a process dying in parallel might attempt to kfree some
of these transactions. And if one of them has no associated t->to_proc,
the t->to_proc->inner_lock will not be acquired.
This means that transaction accesses in binder_thread_release() after
t->to_proc has been cleared might race with binder_free_transaction()
and cause a use-after-free error as reported by KASAN:
==================================================================
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in binder_thread_release+0x5d0/0x798
Write of size 8 at addr ffff000016627500 by task X/715
CPU: 17 UID: 0 PID: 715 Comm: X Not tainted 7.1.0-rc5-00149-g8fde5d1d47f6 #30 PREEMPT
Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT)
Call trace:
binder_thread_release+0x5d0/0x798
binder_ioctl+0x12c0/0x299c
[...]
Allocated by task 717 on cpu 18 at 67.267803s:
__kasan_kmalloc+0xa0/0xbc
__kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x174/0x444
binder_transaction+0x554/0x8150
binder_thread_write+0xa30/0x4354
binder_ioctl+0x20f0/0x299c
[...]
Freed by task 202 on cpu 18 at 90.416221s:
__kasan_slab_free+0x58/0x80
kfree+0x1a0/0x4a4
binder_free_transaction+0x150/0x294
binder_send_failed_reply+0x398/0x6d8
binder_release_work+0x3e4/0x4ec
binder_deferred_func+0xbd8/0x104c
[...]
==================================================================
In order to avoid this, make sure that binder_free_transaction() reads
the t->to_proc under the transaction lock. This will serialize the
transaction release with the accesses in binder_thread_release(). Plus,
it matches the documented locking rules for @to_proc.