CVE-2026-53227 PUBLISHED

net: openvswitch: fix possible kfree_skb of ERR_PTR

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.06.2026 Published: 25.06.2026 Updated: 25.06.2026

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

net: openvswitch: fix possible kfree_skb of ERR_PTR

After the patch in the "Fixes" tag, the allocation of the "reply" skb can happen either before or after locking the ovs_mutex.

However, error cleanups still follow the classical reversed order, assuming "reply" is allocated before locking: it is freed after unlocking.

If "reply" allocation happens after locking the mutex and it fails, "reply" is left with an ERR_PTR, and execution jumps to the correspondent cleanup stage which will try to free an invalid pointer.

Fix this by setting the pointer to NULL after having saved its error value.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to e248fb2e680deb2bd37bac551b72638fe4938a76 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to 0bb5b2dc1b90aa7dd1473fc8c4d813a29255ff8d (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to 971b1b37774f13acc5add0a2843f8598446b8598 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to 25fdf53698535fe8790237f5a8a9626791429785 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to e3d509a1b71396e1452060dbf84a805fd1c3c549 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to ecc55aad3390129a87106841f4b68bf3d70c9264 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to 895d1dd9057cde1687fa0f4286d47ceed0b82997 (excl.)
  • affected from 893f139b9a6c00c097b9082a90f3041cfb3a0d20 to ee30dd2909d8b98619f4341c70ec8dc8e155ab02 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 3.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 3.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.259 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.210 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.176 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.143 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.94 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.36 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0.13 to 7.0.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1 to * (incl.)

References