CVE-2026-74750 PUBLISHED

ovpn: defer key slot crypto freeing to workqueue

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 15.08.2026 Published: 26.08.2026 Updated: 26.08.2026

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

ovpn: defer key slot crypto freeing to workqueue

Key slots are released through a kref and the existing release path frees the AEAD transforms from an RCU callback. That is not safe for all crypto implementations: crypto_free_aead can sleep, for example when an async or hardware implementation has teardown work to complete.

Use queue_rcu_work for key-slot release. This keeps the RCU grace period needed by lockless key-slot readers, but runs the actual crypto teardown from workqueue context where sleeping is allowed. Once the rcu_work callback runs, pre-existing RCU readers are gone, and the final kref put already proves that no transform user remains, so the worker can release the AEAD transforms and free the slot directly.

The previous patch drains ovpn_wq during module exit, so queued key-slot teardown work cannot outlive module text.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 8534731dbf2d52a539b94defd06d2a8d3514aacb to 0f77ed5ee91946ea63e29f2e0ff9dc9e722d8da3 (excl.)
  • affected from 8534731dbf2d52a539b94defd06d2a8d3514aacb to 2da3dfa1ddfe55a065f484750c83660e3bd4ac00 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.10 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2 to * (incl.)

References