CVE-2026-64525

xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit

N/A
Published: July 25, 2026 at 09:20 AM UTC
Updated: October 30, 2026 at 01:19 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
N/A
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit The struct pernet_operations docstring in include/net/net_namespace.h explicitly warns against blocking RCU primitives in .exit handlers: Exit methods using blocking RCU primitives, such as synchronize_rcu(), should be implemented via exit_batch. [...] Please, avoid synchronize_rcu() at all, where it's possible. Note that a combination of pre_exit() and exit() can be used, since a synchronize_rcu() is guaranteed between the calls. xfrm_policy_fini() violates this: it calls synchronize_rcu() before freeing the policy_bydst hash tables (so no RCU reader is mid- traversal at free time), but runs from xfrm_net_ops.exit -- once per namespace -- so a cleanup_net() of N namespaces pays N full RCU grace periods serially. Use the documented pre_exit/exit split. Move the policy flush (and the workqueue drains it depends on) into a new .pre_exit handler; xfrm_policy_fini() then runs in .exit and frees the hash tables after the synchronize_rcu_expedited() that cleanup_net() guarantees between the two phases. Providing O(1) RCU grace periods per batch instead of O(N). Observed on Linux 6.18 with a workload doing unshare(CLONE_NEWNET) at ~13/sec sustained: cleanup_net() and the netns_wq rescuer kthread both stuck in xfrm_policy_fini()'s synchronize_rcu(), >300k struct net accumulated in the cleanup queue, Percpu in /proc/meminfo climbed to 130+ GB on 256-CPU hosts, and memcg OOMs followed. setup_net and __put_net counts were balanced, ruling out a refcount leak.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

069daad4f2ae9c5c108131995529d5f02392c44633a3149dd81a1e2f52b80ee1e0fc380b39f3d0283733fce2871c9bca9dd18a1a23b1432ea215a094438b1f668ad58f46ce699bb48e4698a7839e3f9e6.1.1916.12.836.18.246.19.146.6.13669daad4f2ae9c5c108131995529d5f2392c4467.0b2faee12538b5b008eaef65a4201eb29cb5cefb3b66920a3348c0f63ba18365248fa21fbf0b3a937
Vendor states this is fixed in 3e52417318473782012b236d0325bf7d2266a597 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 91cc13978ab0bc6f669139f53e7e613a860d10e0 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in bca6386dc08750fc7cdcbc7683473748ba3114b9 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d14ae8ef88c2c6590e107db61b6adce148cec7b3 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.12.93 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.35 (unaffected)
Affected range stops below 6.20, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 6.7, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.0 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.0.12 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.1 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

Quick Info

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