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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-64525 json

xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit

published 2026-07-25 3 mo ago modified 2026-11-03 5 d ago also EUVD-2026-49037

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit

The struct pernet_operations docstring in include/net/net_namespace.h explicitly warns against blocking RCU primitives in .exit handlers:

Exit methods using blocking RCU primitives, such as synchronize_rcu(), should be implemented via exit_batch. [...] Please, avoid synchronize_rcu() at all, where it's possible.

Note that a combination of pre_exit() and exit() can be used, since a synchronize_rcu() is guaranteed between the calls.

xfrm_policy_fini() violates this: it calls synchronize_rcu() before freeing the policy_bydst hash tables (so no RCU reader is mid- traversal at free time), but runs from xfrm_net_ops.exit -- once per namespace -- so a cleanup_net() of N namespaces pays N full RCU grace periods serially.

Use the documented pre_exit/exit split. Move the policy flush (and the workqueue drains it depends on) into a new .pre_exit handler; xfrm_policy_fini() then runs in .exit and frees the hash tables after the synchronize_rcu_expedited() that cleanup_net() guarantees between the two phases. Providing O(1) RCU grace periods per batch instead of O(N).

Observed on Linux 6.18 with a workload doing unshare(CLONE_NEWNET) at ~13/sec sustained: cleanup_net() and the netns_wq rescuer kthread both stuck in xfrm_policy_fini()'s synchronize_rcu(), >300k struct net accumulated in the cleanup queue, Percpu in /proc/meminfo climbed to 130+ GB on 256-CPU hosts, and memcg OOMs followed. setup_net and __put_net counts were balanced, ruling out a refcount leak.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.2, 6.7, 6.12.93, 6.18.35, 6.20, 7.0.12, 7.1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.94-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64525

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-146.146
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1066.69
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1070.78
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1065.73
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1003.4

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-64525

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 Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-159998.55.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-159998.55.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-159998.55.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-159998.55.1.159998.21.42
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.90.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.90.1
  • kernel-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.90.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.90.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:24550-1SUSE-SU-2026:5091-1SUSE-SU-2026:23887-1SUSE-SU-2026:23902-1SUSE-SU-2026:23897-1SUSE-SU-2026:23881-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21910-1

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-2026-64525 updated cvss 7.0

kernel: xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit

  • 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 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

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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