CVE-2026-68290: rds: tcp: unregister sysctl before tearing down listen socket

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: 2026-08-10 · updated 2026-10-30
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: rds: tcp: unregister sysctl before tearing down listen socket rds_tcp_exit_net() frees the per-netns RDS TCP listen socket via rds_tcp_kill_sock() before unregistering the per-netns sysctl table. Since rds_tcp_skbuf_handler() derives the netns from rtn->rds_tcp_listen_sock->sk, a concurrent sysctl write can race with netns teardown and dereference the freed socket/sk. KASAN reports the race as: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rds_tcp_skbuf_handler+0x2aa/0x2e0 rds_tcp_skbuf_handler net/rds/tcp.c:721 proc_sys_call_handler fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c vfs_write fs/read_write.c __x64_sys_pwrite64 fs/read_write.c Fix this by unregistering the RDS TCP sysctl table before calling rds_tcp_kill_sock(). unregister_net_sysctl_table() prevents new sysctl handlers from starting and waits for in-flight handlers to finish, so the listen socket can then be released safely. The fix was tested against the linked reproducer.

Affected products

Linux: from 6.12.10 before 6.12.101; from 6.6.160 before 6.7 — fixed in 6.12.101, 6.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux 6.12.101, 6.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-68290 or the next vulnerability affects your stack