CVE-2026-23410: apparmor: fix race on rawdata dereference

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2026-04-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-362

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: apparmor: fix race on rawdata dereference There is a race condition that leads to a use-after-free situation: because the rawdata inodes are not refcounted, an attacker can start open()ing one of the rawdata files, and at the same time remove the last reference to this rawdata (by removing the corresponding profile, for example), which frees its struct aa_loaddata; as a result, when seq_rawdata_open() is reached, i_private is a dangling pointer and freed memory is accessed. The rawdata inodes weren't refcounted to avoid a circular refcount and were supposed to be held by the profile rawdata reference. However during profile removal there is a window where the vfs and profile destruction race, resulting in the use after free. Fix this by moving to a double refcount scheme. Where the profile refcount on rawdata is used to break the circular dependency. Allowing for freeing of the rawdata once all inode references to the rawdata are put.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.13.1 before 5.10.253; from 5.11 before 5.15.203; from 5.16 before 6.1.169; from 6.2 before 6.6.130; from 6.7 before 6.12.77; from 6.13 before 6.18.18 — fixed in 5.10.253, 5.15.203, 6.1.169, 6.12.77, 6.18.18, 6.19.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.253, 5.15.203, 6.1.169, 6.12.77. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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