Critical · published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/smc: fix socket use-after-free during link group termination
__smc_lgr_terminate() drops conns_lock after finding a connection in
lgr->conns_all, but before taking a reference on its socket. The connection
is embedded in the socket, and its registration reference protects it only
while the connection remains in the tree.
A concurrent close can unregister the connection and drop that reference,
freeing the socket before the termination worker reaches sock_hold().
The race is reachable when close overlaps link group termination.
Local stress testing reproduced the use-after-free and KASAN reported:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in __smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc]
Write of size 4 by task kworker/3:3
Workqueue: events smc_lgr_terminate_work [smc]
__smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc]
The socket was allocated by smc_create(), freed through
slab_free_after_rcu_debug(), and was followed by:
refcount_t: addition on 0; use-after-free.
__smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc]
Take the socket reference while conns_lock still protects the tree entry.
The unregister path then cannot drop the last reference until termination
has finished using the socket.