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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2022-50838 json

net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()

published 2025-12-30 10 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-55860

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 21%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()

Changheon Lee reported TCP socket leaks, with a nice repro.

It seems we leak TCP sockets with the following sequence:

1) SOF_TIMESTAMPING_TX_ACK is enabled on the socket.

Each ACK will cook an skb put in error queue, from __skb_tstamp_tx(). __skb_tstamp_tx() is using skb_clone(), unless SOF_TIMESTAMPING_OPT_TSONLY was also requested.

2) If the application is also using MSG_ZEROCOPY, then we put in the error queue cloned skbs that had a struct ubuf_info attached to them.

Whenever an struct ubuf_info is allocated, sock_zerocopy_alloc() does a sock_hold().

As long as the cloned skbs are still in sk_error_queue, socket refcount is kept elevated.

3) Application closes the socket, while error queue is not empty.

Since tcp_close() no longer purges the socket error queue, we might end up with a TCP socket with at least one skb in error queue keeping the socket alive forever.

This bug can be (ab)used to consume all kernel memory and freeze the host.

We need to purge the error queue, with proper synchronization against concurrent writers.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.5, 4.9.337, 4.14.303, 4.19.270, 5.4.229, 5.10.163, 5.15, 5.15.86, 6.0.16, 6.1.2, 6.2
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 6.1.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50838

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-208.220
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-144.161
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-69.76
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1153.166
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1097.105
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1033.37
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1101.110
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1031.38

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50838

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.133.1.150500.6.65.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.118.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.5 5.14.21-150500.13.118.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:0317-1SUSE-SU-2026:0263-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2022-50838 updated cvss 6.2

kernel: net: stream: purge sk_error_queue in sk_stream_kill_queues()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 21% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.