CVE-2026-23072: l2tp: Fix memleak in l2tp_udp_encap_recv().

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-02-04 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: l2tp: Fix memleak in l2tp_udp_encap_recv(). syzbot reported memleak of struct l2tp_session, l2tp_tunnel, sock, etc. [0] The cited commit moved down the validation of the protocol version in l2tp_udp_encap_recv(). The new place requires an extra error handling to avoid the memleak. Let's call l2tp_session_put() there. [0]: BUG: memory leak unreferenced object 0xffff88810a290200 (size 512): comm "syz.0.17", pid 6086, jiffies 4294944299 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 7d eb 04 0c 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 }............... 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc babb6a4f): kmemleak_alloc_recursive include/linux/kmemleak.h:44 [inline] slab_post_alloc_hook mm/slub.c:4958 [inline] slab_alloc_node mm/slub.c:5263 [inline] __do_kmalloc_node mm/slub.c:5656 [inline] __kmalloc_noprof+0x3e0/0x660 mm/slub.c:5669 kmalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:961 [inline] kzalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:1094 [inline] l2tp_session_create+0x3a/0x3b0 net/l2tp/l2tp_core.c:1778 pppol2tp_connect+0x48b/0x920 net/l2tp/l2tp_ppp.c:755 __sys_connect_file+0x7a/0xb0 net/socket.c:2089 __sys_connect+0xde/0x110 net/socket.c:2108 __do_sys_connect net/socket.c:2114 [inline] __se_sys_connect net/socket.c:2111 [inline] __x64_sys_connect+0x1c/0x30 net/socket.c:2111 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xa4/0xf80 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.10 before 6.12.68; from 6.13 before 6.18.8; 6.19-rc1, 6.19-rc2, 6.19-rc3, 6.19-rc4, 6.19-rc5, 6.19-rc6 — fixed in 6.12.68, 6.18.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.68, 6.18.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-23072 or the next vulnerability affects your stack