High · published August 22, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: smc: fix splice entry lifetime imbalance in smc_rx_splice
smc_rx_splice() passes pages to splice_to_pipe() before taking the
references that cover the lifetime of each splice entry. In the
VM-backed RMB path, splice_to_pipe() may drop unqueued entries through
smc_rx_spd_release(), while queued entries are released later via the
pipe buffer callback.
The old post-splice accounting also derives the number of queued VM pages
from an offset mutated while building the descriptor, and a multi-page
splice pairs one sock_hold() with multiple sock_put() calls.
Take the page and socket references for every candidate entry before
splice_to_pipe(), and drop the matching private state, page reference,
and socket reference from smc_rx_spd_release() for entries that never
get queued. This fixes a refcount imbalance that can underflow page
refcounts and trigger a use-after-free.