High · published September 12, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ip: orphan prefetched skbs before multicast forwarding
IPv4 and IPv6 input preserve an skb->sk association installed by
bpf_sk_assign() so that local delivery can use the selected socket under
RCU. Both address families can also prefetch a socket in UDP early demux.
In both paths (BPF and UDP early demux) a reference is not guaranteed to
be held on the socket.
When a multicast packet is not locally deliverable, IPv6 hands the
original skb to ip6_mr_input(). IPv4's ip_mr_input() similarly keeps the
original skb when local delivery is not needed. Either path can put the
skb on an unresolved multicast route queue or forward it after the
receive-side RCU section ends.
After the prefetched socket is destroyed, a later skb free invokes
sock_pfree() and dereferences the stale skb->sk. Orphan the skb before
each non-local multicast forwarding path. Local delivery retains the
original skb; the existing skb_clone() calls provide multicast forwarding
with a socket-free clone.