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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-31610 json

ksmbd: fix mechToken leak when SPNEGO decode fails after token alloc

published 2026-04-24 6 mo ago modified 2026-07-24 3 mo ago also EUVD-2026-25503

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 3%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.136, 6.12.83, 6.18.24, 6.19.14, 7.0.1, 7.1
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.180-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.85-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.19.14-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-31610

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-198.208
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-136.136
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-27.27
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1117.124
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1061.64
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1118.128
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1064.72

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-31610

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-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.0.3-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10703-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.137.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-83732

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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-2026-31610 updated

kernel: ksmbd: fix mechToken leak when SPNEGO decode fails after token alloc

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more 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 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

0.14% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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