CVE-2026-80811 PUBLISHED

io_uring/cmd: fix iovec leak when the async cmd is not recycled

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 26.08.2026 Published: 04.09.2026 Updated: 04.09.2026

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

io_uring/cmd: fix iovec leak when the async cmd is not recycled

An io_async_cmd carries an iovec array in ->vec.iovec, allocated when the vec has to grow and kept across recycling through ctx->cmd_cache. On two paths nothing frees it and io_clean_op()'s kfree(req->async_data) drops the io_async_cmd without it.

io_req_uring_cleanup() clears the async data flags only when io_alloc_cache_put() succeeds, and the cache holds IO_ALLOC_CACHE_MAX == 128 entries, so once it is full the put fails and the vec is left behind. An NVMe passthrough workload gets there without doing anything unusual: nvme_uring_cmd_io() returns -EIOCBQUEUED, so the io_async_cmd stays attached for the lifetime of the command and the live object count tracks the queue depth. Above 128 the puts start failing.

->cleanup is the last chance to free an inherited vec, since io_req_uring_cleanup() returns early for an io-wq issued command and is not called at all for one completed without ever being issued. But io_clean_op() calls ->cleanup only if REQ_F_NEED_CLEANUP is set, and for uring_cmd that happens only where the vec has to grow, so a command reusing a large enough cached vec never sets it. io_rw_alloc_async() and io_msg_alloc_async() flag an inherited vec for exactly this reason; io_uring_cmd_prep() does not.

Flag an inherited vec in io_uring_cmd_prep(), and free the vec when the cache put fails, as io_req_rw_cleanup() does.

The leak is invisible under KASAN, where io_alloc_cache_vec_kasan() frees the vec unconditionally.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 3a4689ac109f18f23ea0d0c1c79e055142796858 to b6a768aa975b9ca81b92f028bdd975d1f8237894 (excl.)
  • affected from 3a4689ac109f18f23ea0d0c1c79e055142796858 to b290de4d16d75b6c1ef42025b47f5d94eb1ec09f (excl.)
  • affected from 3a4689ac109f18f23ea0d0c1c79e055142796858 to 7068d3587a64a24943a7c9e232976da2c9e0e303 (excl.)
  • affected from 3a4689ac109f18f23ea0d0c1c79e055142796858 to bb34ae5da3365699d53a756f4c96b6ea9f8ba0c1 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.15 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.15 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.47 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.11 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.1 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc1 to * (incl.)

References