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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-80850 json

tcp: fix AO info use-after-free in tcp_ao_connect_init()

published 2026-09-04 2 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 21 d ago also EUVD-2026-71300

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 6%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

tcp: fix AO info use-after-free in tcp_ao_connect_init()

tcp_v4_connect() adds a SYN-SENT socket to the ehash before calling tcp_connect(). If TCP-AO is configured, tcp_connect() first verifies that a key matches the peer and the bound device's current L3 master. tcp_ao_connect_init() later resolves the L3 master again and removes keys which do not match it.

The socket lock does not stabilize the bound device's VRF membership. Detaching the device from its VRF between the initial validation and the L3-master calculation in tcp_ao_connect_init() can therefore make the validation succeed while initialization observes the default L3 domain and removes the only key. The subsequent AO lookup then fails, so the no-key path clears tp->ao_info and frees it directly.

The receive path can find the socket in the ehash and load tp->ao_info under RCU before acquiring the socket lock. A reader which loaded the old pointer can thus continue into tcp_inbound_ao_hash() after the direct free.

The issue was found during a static audit of TCP-AO object lifetime. An unprivileged reproducer in self-created user and network namespaces raced connect() with detaching a veth from its VRF while sending TCP-AO segments. It triggered the same KASAN report on two fresh boots:

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in tcp_inbound_ao_hash+0x585/0x19f0 Write of size 8 at addr ffff88800bf88128 by task tcp_ao_vrf_race/232

Call Trace: tcp_inbound_ao_hash+0x585/0x19f0 tcp_inbound_hash+0x677/0xa80 tcp_v4_rcv+0x1c3e/0x3ab0

Allocated by task 235: tcp_ao_alloc_info+0x43/0xf0 tcp_ao_add_cmd+0xdf7/0x13b0 do_tcp_setsockopt+0x168c/0x2640

Freed by task 235: kfree+0x1b8/0x550 tcp_connect+0x252/0x4f00 tcp_v4_connect+0x1114/0x1720

The bad address is 40 bytes inside the freed 128-byte object, matching the tcp_ao_info counters.key_not_found field. The two runs used 1000 attempts each, reached the no-key path 366 and 411 times, and produced one and two KASAN reports respectively. With this change, the same reproducer reached the no-key path 366 times in 1000 attempts without a KASAN report or oops.

Use tcp_ao_destroy_sock() for the no-key path. It unpublishes the AO info, updates the socket memory and static-key accounting, and defers the free until after an RCU grace period.

Also drop the WARN_ON_ONCE() and its stale comment. The VRF detach race makes the no-key state reachable during normal operation, so it is a handled condition rather than an impossible assertion. On panic_on_warn kernels the WARN would turn this handled race into a kernel panic.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.108, 6.18.49, 7.1.13, 7.2.3, 7.3
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.111-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.1.13-1
  • linux-6.12 Debian 12 6.12.111-1~deb12u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-80850

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.17
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.16
  • linux-hwe-7.0 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-7.0 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-80850

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 7.2.5-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11773-1

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-2026-80850 updated cvss 7.0

kernel: tcp: fix AO info use-after-free in tcp_ao_connect_init()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • 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 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-selftests-internal Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    +1 more products
    Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    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

0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6% 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.