Use-after-free of orphaned AF_UNIX in Ubuntu builds of Linux kernel
Get instant alerts when new vulnerabilities affect Ubuntu Linux - before attackers find them.
Ubuntu Linux 6.8 GA retains the legacy AF_UNIX garbage collector but backports upstream commit 8594d9b85c07 ("af_unix: Don’t call skb_get() for OOB skb"). When orphaned MSG_OOB sockets hit unix_gc(), the garbage collector still calls kfree_skb() as if OOB SKBs held two references; on Ubuntu Linux 6.8 (Noble Numbat) kernel tree, they have only the queue reference, so the buffer is freed while still reachable and subsequent queue walks dereference freed memory, yielding a reliable local privilege escalation (LPE) caused by a use-after-free (UAF). Ubuntu builds that have already taken the new GC stack from commit 4090fa373f0e, and mainline Linux kernels shipping that infrastructure are unaffected because they no longer execute the legacy collector path. This issue affects Ubuntu Linux from 6.8.0-56.58 before 6.8.0-84.84.
Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.
No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:
SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.
Get alerted
Track the products you run and VulnTracker tells you when a new CVE affects them — with what is known about fixing it, and nothing about the rest.