CVE-2026-31610 PUBLISHED

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

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.03.2026 Published: 24.04.2026 Updated: 25.04.2026

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:

<pre>if (conn->use_spnego && conn->mechToken) { kfree(conn->mechToken); conn->mechToken = NULL; } </pre>

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.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from fad4161b5cd01a24202234976ebbb133f7adc0b5 to dd577cb55588ec3fbc66af3621280306601c4192 (excl.)
  • affected from fad4161b5cd01a24202234976ebbb133f7adc0b5 to dd53414e301beb915fe672dc4c4a51bafb917604 (excl.)
  • affected from fad4161b5cd01a24202234976ebbb133f7adc0b5 to 269c800a7a7e363459291885b35f7bc72e231ed6 (excl.)
  • affected from fad4161b5cd01a24202234976ebbb133f7adc0b5 to 6c8c44e6553b9f072f62d9875e567766eb293162 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.15 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.15 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.83 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.24 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.14 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0.1 to 7.0.* (incl.)

References