HIGH
inet FragmentQueue Race
CVE-2026-97602
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
KernelScan AI7.8HIGH
01Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: inet: frags: invalidate queues before flushing them fqdir_pre_exit() flushes the skbs from incomplete queues without changing their completion state. A fragment which found a queue before high_thresh was cleared can then acquire the queue lock and reuse stale reassembly metadata. A queue concurrently killed after fqdir->dead is set can instead become INET_FRAG_COMPLETE|INET_FRAG_HASH_DEAD while still holding its old skbs; skipping it because it is complete leaves those references behind until asynchronous fqdir teardown. For IPv6, stale metadata can make ip6_frag_reasm() use the old nhoffset with a new skb and access memory out of bounds. The resulting heap corruption can be leveraged for local privilege escalation when unprivileged network namespaces are available. Unflushed fragments can also keep conntrack references alive after the conntrack per-net cleanup point. Kill each incomplete queue, then flush every queue still owned by the dying rhashtable. HASH_DEAD identifies that ownership, while complete queues without it are already owned by another destroy path and must be left alone. Releasing a timer reference removed by inet_frag_kill() is deferred to inet_frag_putn(), after the queue lock is dropped. KASAN report: BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in ipv6_frag_rcv (net/ipv6/reassembly.c:289 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:229 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:391 (discriminator 2)) Write of size 1 at addr ff110001039c6e00 by task poc/771 Call Trace: ? ipv6_frag_rcv (net/ipv6/reassembly.c:289 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:229 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:391 (discriminator 2)) ipv6_frag_rcv (net/ipv6/reassembly.c:289 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:229 (discriminator 2) net/ipv6/reassembly.c:391 (discriminator 2)) ip6_protocol_deliver_rcu (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:479 (discriminator 5)) ip6_input_finish (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:534) ipv6_rcv (include/net/dst.h:480 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:119 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:109 (discriminator 3) include/linux/netfilter.h:325 (discriminator 3) include/linux/netfilter.h:319 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:351 (discriminator 3)) packet_sendmsg (net/packet/af_packet.c:3110 net/packet/af_packet.c:3142) __x64_sys_sendmmsg (net/socket.c:2883 net/socket.c:2880 net/socket.c:2880) The buggy address belongs to the object at ff110001039c6b40 which belongs to the cache skbuff_small_head of size 704 The buggy address is located 0 bytes to the right of allocated 704-byte region [ff110001039c6b40, ff110001039c6e00) BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in ip6_protocol_deliver_rcu (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:423 (discriminator 1)) Read of size 1 at addr ff110001039c6e08 by task poc/771 Call Trace: ? ip6_protocol_deliver_rcu (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:423 (discriminator 1)) ip6_protocol_deliver_rcu (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:423 (discriminator 1)) ip6_input_finish (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:534) ipv6_rcv (include/net/dst.h:480 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:119 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:109 (discriminator 3) include/linux/netfilter.h:325 (discriminator 3) include/linux/netfilter.h:319 (discriminator 3) net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:351 (discriminator 3)) packet_sendmsg (net/packet/af_packet.c:3110 net/packet/af_packet.c:3142) __x64_sys_sendmmsg (net/socket.c:2883 net/socket.c:2880 net/socket.c:2880) packet_sendmsg (net/packet/af_packet.c:2959 net/packet/af_packet.c:3053 net/packet/af_packet.c:3142) __x64_sys_sendmmsg (net/socket.c:2883 net/socket.c:2880 net/socket.c:2880) The buggy address belongs to the object at ff110001039c6b40 which belongs to the cache skbuff_small_head of size 704 The buggy address is located 8 bytes to the right of allocated 704-byte region [ff110001039c6b40, ff110001039c6e00)
02KernelScan AI Analysis
Risk summary
An unprivileged local user can exploit a race condition in the kernel's IP fragment reassembly teardown path to trigger an out-of-bounds heap write via stale IPv6 reassembly metadata. This can be leveraged for local privilege escalation to kernel level when unprivileged network namespaces are available, which is the default on most Linux distributions. The corruption can also cause kernel crashes and leave conntrack references dangling past cleanup.
Vulnerability analysis
When a network namespace is torn down, the kernel clears out partially assembled packet fragments without first marking the queues as invalid. A fragment that arrives during this window can reuse stale reassembly state, causing the reassembly code to apply an outdated offset to a new packet buffer and write past the end of the heap allocation. A queue that is marked complete during teardown can also be skipped, leaving its old packet references behind until later cleanup. The fix invalidates each incomplete queue before clearing it, preventing new fragments from attaching to dying state, and only flushes queues still owned by the dying namespace while leaving completed ones alone. An unprivileged local user can trigger the flaw by creating and tearing down a network namespace while sending IPv6 packets; it requires only that IPv6 and unprivileged user namespaces are enabled, which is the default on most systems.
Lifecycle
03Fix Versions
| Branch | Introduced | Fixed in | Patch commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.6 | 6.6.143 | 6.6.158 | ff83367cda8e |
| 6.12 | 6.12.93 | 6.12.111 | b9d77f1652e7 |
| 6.18 | 6.18.3 | 6.18.53 | 7cb5f4643a7f |
| 7.2 | — | 7.2.7 | bf3d6c44c84c |
| mainline | — | 7.3-rc3 | b824476c56a1 |
| cip/6.12 | — | 6.12.111-cip32 | b9d77f1652e7 |