CVE-2026-31516 PUBLISHED

xfrm: prevent policy_hthresh.work from racing with netns teardown

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.03.2026 Published: 22.04.2026 Updated: 22.04.2026

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

xfrm: prevent policy_hthresh.work from racing with netns teardown

A XFRM_MSG_NEWSPDINFO request can queue the per-net work item policy_hthresh.work onto the system workqueue.

The queued callback, xfrm_hash_rebuild(), retrieves the enclosing struct net via container_of(). If the net namespace is torn down before that work runs, the associated struct net may already have been freed, and xfrm_hash_rebuild() may then dereference stale memory.

xfrm_policy_fini() already flushes policy_hash_work during teardown, but it does not synchronize policy_hthresh.work.

Synchronize policy_hthresh.work in xfrm_policy_fini() as well, so the queued work cannot outlive the net namespace teardown and access a freed struct net.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 880a6fab8f6ba5b5abe59ea68533202ddea1012c to 56ea2257b83ee29a543f158159e3d1abc1e3e4fe (excl.)
  • affected from 880a6fab8f6ba5b5abe59ea68533202ddea1012c to 8854e9367465d784046362698731c1111e3b39b8 (excl.)
  • affected from 880a6fab8f6ba5b5abe59ea68533202ddea1012c to 4e2e77843fef473ef47e322d52436d8308582a96 (excl.)
  • affected from 880a6fab8f6ba5b5abe59ea68533202ddea1012c to 29fe3a61bcdce398ee3955101c39f89c01a8a77e (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 3.18 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 3.18 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.80 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.21 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.11 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0 to * (incl.)

References