CVE-2026-64218: batman-adv: bla: fix report_work leak on backbone_gw purge

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: 2026-07-24 · updated 2026-08-11

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: batman-adv: bla: fix report_work leak on backbone_gw purge batadv_bla_purge_backbone_gw() removes stale backbone gateway entries, but fails to properly handle their associated report_work: - If report_work is running, the purge must wait for it to finish before freeing the backbone_gw, otherwise the worker may access freed memory (e.g. bat_priv). - If report_work is pending, the purge must cancel it and release the reference held for that pending work item. The previous implementation called hlist_for_each_entry_safe() inside a spin_lock_bh() section, but cancel_work_sync() may sleep and therefore cannot be called from within a spinlock-protected region. Restructure the loop to handle one entry per spinlock critical section: acquire the lock, find the next entry to purge, remove it from the hash list, then release the lock before calling cancel_work_sync() and dropping the hash_entry reference. Repeat until no more entries require purging.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 3.5 before 5.10.258; from 5.11 before 5.15.209; from 5.16 before 6.1.175; from 6.2 before 6.6.142; from 6.7 before 6.12.92; from 6.13 before 6.18.34 — fixed in 5.10.258, 5.15.209, 6.1.175, 6.12.92, 6.18.34, 6.6.142

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.258, 5.15.209, 6.1.175, 6.12.92. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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