CVE-2026-23460 PUBLISHED

net/rose: fix NULL pointer dereference in rose_transmit_link on reconnect

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.01.2026 Published: 03.04.2026 Updated: 03.04.2026

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

net/rose: fix NULL pointer dereference in rose_transmit_link on reconnect

syzkaller reported a bug [1], and the reproducer is available at [2].

ROSE sockets use four sk->sk_state values: TCP_CLOSE, TCP_LISTEN, TCP_SYN_SENT, and TCP_ESTABLISHED. rose_connect() already rejects calls for TCP_ESTABLISHED (-EISCONN) and TCP_CLOSE with SS_CONNECTING (-ECONNREFUSED), but lacks a check for TCP_SYN_SENT.

When rose_connect() is called a second time while the first connection attempt is still in progress (TCP_SYN_SENT), it overwrites rose->neighbour via rose_get_neigh(). If that returns NULL, the socket is left with rose->state == ROSE_STATE_1 but rose->neighbour == NULL. When the socket is subsequently closed, rose_release() sees ROSE_STATE_1 and calls rose_write_internal() -> rose_transmit_link(skb, NULL), causing a NULL pointer dereference.

Per connect(2), a second connect() while a connection is already in progress should return -EALREADY. Add this missing check for TCP_SYN_SENT to complete the state validation in rose_connect().

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=d00f90e0af54102fb271 [2] https://gist.github.com/mrpre/9e6779e0d13e2c66779b1653fef80516

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to c2ab74c12932e52cfa1e7e4582d42b0c8bec96c7 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 0c9fb70a206a8734e10468ecc24d57c7596cf64e (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 508f49ccbe0329641bb681f7d0052bb4e5943252 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to 0c3e8bff808f17ad37a51d8e719eed22c7863120 (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to a12254050e3050f1011cd24f3b880a6882d0139d (excl.)
  • affected from 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to e1f0a18c9564cdb16523c802e2c6fe5874e3d944 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 2.6.12 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 2.6.12 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.167 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.130 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.78 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.20 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.10 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0-rc5 to * (incl.)

References