CVE-2026-89564: ip: orphan prefetched skbs before multicast forwarding

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: 2026-09-11 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ip: orphan prefetched skbs before multicast forwarding IPv4 and IPv6 input preserve an skb->sk association installed by bpf_sk_assign() so that local delivery can use the selected socket under RCU. Both address families can also prefetch a socket in UDP early demux. In both paths (BPF and UDP early demux) a reference is not guaranteed to be held on the socket. When a multicast packet is not locally deliverable, IPv6 hands the original skb to ip6_mr_input(). IPv4's ip_mr_input() similarly keeps the original skb when local delivery is not needed. Either path can put the skb on an unresolved multicast route queue or forward it after the receive-side RCU section ends. After the prefetched socket is destroyed, a later skb free invokes sock_pfree() and dereferences the stale skb->sk. Orphan the skb before each non-local multicast forwarding path. Local delivery retains the original skb; the existing skb_clone() calls provide multicast forwarding with a socket-free clone.

Affected products

Linux: 5.7 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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