High · published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: sch_teql: Introduce slaves_lock to avoid race condition and UAF
The teql master->slaves singly linked list is not protected against
multiple writes. It can be mod'ed concurently from teql_master_xmit(),
teql_dequeue(), teql_init() and teql_destroy() without holding any list
lock or RCU protection.
[email protected] has demonstrated that the qdisc is freed
after an RCU grace period, but teql_master_xmit() running on another
CPU can still hold a stale pointer into the list, resulting in a
slab-use-after-free:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in teql_master_xmit+0xf0f/0x16b0
Read of size 8 at addr ffff888013fb0440 by task poc/332
Freed 512-byte region [ffff888013fb0400, ffff888013fb0600) (kmalloc-512)
The fix?
Add a per-master slaves_lock spinlock that serializes all mutations of
master->slaves and the NEXT_SLAVE() links in teql_destroy() and
teql_qdisc_init(). teql_master_xmit() also takes the same slaves_lock
around those updates.
Annotate master->slaves and the per-slave ->next pointer with __rcu and
use the appropriate RCU accessors everywhere they are touched:
rcu_assign_pointer() on the writer side (under slaves_lock),
rcu_dereference_protected() for the writer-side loads (also under
slaves_lock), rcu_dereference_bh() for the loads in teql_master_xmit() and
rtnl_dereference() for the loads in teql_master_open()/teql_master_mtu(),
which run under RTNL.
Pair this with rcu_read_lock_bh()/rcu_read_unlock_bh() around the list
traversal in teql_master_xmit(), so that readers either observe a fully
linked list or are deferred until the in-flight mutation completes. The two
early-return paths in teql_master_xmit() are updated to release the RCU-bh
read-side critical section before returning, since leaving it held would
disable BH on that CPU for good.