CVE-2026-98070 PUBLISHED

net/rds: acquire RDS_IN_XMIT in rds_tcp_reset_callbacks()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 25.09.2026 Updated: 25.09.2026

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

net/rds: acquire RDS_IN_XMIT in rds_tcp_reset_callbacks()

rds_tcp_reset_callbacks() quiesces the transmit path by setting the path state to RDS_CONN_RESETTING and then waiting for RDS_IN_XMIT to be sampled clear before swapping the underlying socket and calling rds_send_path_reset().

Sampling the bit clear is not the same as owning it: rds_send_xmit() can re-acquire RDS_IN_XMIT right after the wait_event() returns. Its state recheck after taking the lock is a store-buffering pattern (the resetter writes the state and reads the bit, the sender writes the bit and reads the state) and acquire_in_xmit() is only an acquire operation, so on weakly ordered architectures both sides can miss each other's write and the transmit path then runs concurrently with rds_send_path_reset() rewriting cp_xmit_* state - which is exactly what the comment above rds_send_path_reset() tells its callers to prevent.

Take the lock instead, hold it across the socket swap and rds_send_path_reset(), and release it with a wake-up at the end. The lock-ordering constraint documented above the wait still holds: the lock is acquired before lock_sock(), so a sender inside tcp_sendmsg() can never be waited on while we hold the socket lock.

Two details of the old code go away with the same change:

  • t_sock is now read only after the lock is acquired. The old code cached it before waiting; the teardown in rds_conn_shutdown() releases that socket and clears t_sock, so a pointer cached before the wait can be stale by the time the accept path resumes. Reading it under RDS_IN_XMIT is what makes the exclusion complete once the teardown owns the same lock, which the next patch arranges; until then the teardown still only samples the bit, and the two paths remain as exposed to each other as they are today.

  • The old !osock early path called rds_send_path_reset() with no serialization at all. It now runs under the lock like the normal path. The conditional RDS_CONN_RESETTING transition of the previous patch happens before the socket check either way: a path found without a socket is either still connecting (its reconnect worker blocked on t_conn_path_lock) and legitimately goes RESETTING -> UP on the new socket, or it has been torn down meanwhile and is dropped.

The in-function comment describing the old wait-based quiesce is rewritten to describe the lock-based one, and the stale block comment above the function (which still described a return value and an incomplete list of t_sock writers) is refreshed to name all four writers - the connect, accept, teardown and swap paths - and what serializes each of them.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 8.1

AV:N - rds_tcp_reset_callbacks() runs when a remote peer's TCP SYN to the RDS/TCP listener is accepted by rds_tcp_accept_one() while the local path already has t_sock set (the duelling-SYN case). The peer's routable TCP connection is what sets off the unsynchronized socket swap and rds_send_path_reset(). AC:H - The attacker must win a narrow store-buffering race between the resetter's test_bit(RDS_IN_XMIT) and rds_send_xmit()'s acquire_in_xmit()/state recheck, which only fails on weakly ordered CPUs. It also needs a duelling SYN that arrives while the local path is still CONNECTING, which the attacker cannot fully control. PR:N - The RDS/TCP listener accepts incoming connections with no authentication. The accept path through rds_tcp_accept_one() into rds_tcp_reset_callbacks() needs only a reachable IP address and TCP port. UI:N - No local user action is needed. The reset path runs from the listen socket's data_ready callback and accept worker, and rds_send_xmit() is driven by the send worker or by pongs to peer pings. S:U - The corruption stays inside kernel memory under a single security authority. Crossing no VM or hardware isolation boundary. C:H - rds_send_path_reset() puts cp_xmit_rm and zeroes the cp_xmit_ offsets while a concurrent rds_send_xmit() still dereferences that rds_message. This is a use-after-free, and a stale osock cached before the wait can be released twice. Reclaiming the freed object could leak kernel memory. I:H - The use-after-free of the rds_message and of the stale socket, plus the torn cp_xmit_ transmit state, corrupt kernel heap objects that could be reclaimed and used for controlled writes. A:H - A sender using a freed cp_xmit_rm, or a double sock_release() of the stale osock, will oops or panic the kernel.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 335b48d980f631fbc5b233cbb3625ac0c86d67cb to d625112564c3e980e02504270222b49b82690cee (excl.)
  • affected from 335b48d980f631fbc5b233cbb3625ac0c86d67cb to 8e4c3b7844c906c7097b4cfedd9dd1f48c9a6a92 (excl.)
  • affected from 335b48d980f631fbc5b233cbb3625ac0c86d67cb to 062d9e008c67289e8e1b221ecdd8f9d60566d012 (excl.)
  • affected from 335b48d980f631fbc5b233cbb3625ac0c86d67cb to 02c5f9dc2efd823e061954d564ce00bacd1bebeb (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 4.7 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 4.7 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.111 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.53 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.7 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc2 to * (incl.)

References