CVE-2026-31610: ksmbd: fix mechToken leak when SPNEGO decode fails after token alloc

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: 2026-04-24 · updated 2026-07-24
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ksmbd: fix mechToken leak when SPNEGO decode fails after token alloc The kernel ASN.1 BER decoder calls action callbacks incrementally as it walks the input. When ksmbd_decode_negTokenInit() reaches the mechToken [2] OCTET STRING element, ksmbd_neg_token_alloc() allocates conn->mechToken immediately via kmemdup_nul(). If a later element in the same blob is malformed, then the decoder will return nonzero after the allocation is already live. This could happen if mechListMIC [3] overrunse the enclosing SEQUENCE. decode_negotiation_token() then sets conn->use_spnego = false because both the negTokenInit and negTokenTarg grammars failed. The cleanup at the bottom of smb2_sess_setup() is gated on use_spnego: if (conn->use_spnego && conn->mechToken) { kfree(conn->mechToken); conn->mechToken = NULL; } so the kfree is skipped, causing the mechToken to never be freed. This codepath is reachable pre-authentication, so untrusted clients can cause slow memory leaks on a server without even being properly authenticated. Fix this up by not checking check for use_spnego, as it's not required, so the memory will always be properly freed. At the same time, always free the memory in ksmbd_conn_free() incase some other failure path forgot to free it.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.15 before 6.6.136; from 6.7 before 6.12.83; from 6.13 before 6.18.24; from 6.19 before 6.19.14; from 7.0 before 7.0.1 — fixed in 6.12.83, 6.18.24, 6.19.14, 6.6.136, 7.0.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.83, 6.18.24, 6.19.14, 6.6.136. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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