CVE-2026-31669

mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established

State
Published
Severity
9.8 Critical
Published
Apr 24, 2026
Updated
Oct 19, 2026
Reserved
Mar 9, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established

The ehash table lookups are lockless and rely on SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU to guarantee socket memory stability during RCU read-side critical sections. Both tcp_prot and tcpv6_prot have their slab caches created with this flag via proto_register().

However, MPTCP's mptcp_subflow_init() copies tcpv6_prot into tcpv6_prot_override during inet_init() (fs_initcall, level 5), before inet6_init() (module_init/device_initcall, level 6) has called proto_register(&tcpv6_prot). At that point, tcpv6_prot.slab is still NULL, so tcpv6_prot_override.slab remains NULL permanently.

This causes MPTCP v6 subflow child sockets to be allocated via kmalloc (falling into kmalloc-4k) instead of the TCPv6 slab cache. The kmalloc-4k cache lacks SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, so when these sockets are freed without SOCK_RCU_FREE (which is cleared for child sockets by design), the memory can be immediately reused. Concurrent ehash lookups under rcu_read_lock can then access freed memory, triggering a slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established.

Fix this by splitting the IPv6-specific initialization out of mptcp_subflow_init() into a new mptcp_subflow_v6_init(), called from mptcp_proto_v6_init() before protocol registration. This ensures tcpv6_prot_override.slab correctly inherits the SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU slab cache.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.19.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before f6e1f25fa5e733570f6d6fe37a4dfed2a0deba47Affected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before fb1f54b7d16f393b8b65d328410f78b4beea8fccAffected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before 3fd6547f5b8ac99687be6d937a0321efda760597Affected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before eb9c6aeb512f877cf397deb1e4526f646c70e4a7Affected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before 15fa9ead4d5e6b6b9c794e84144146c917f2cb62Affected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before b313e9037d98c13938740e5ebda7852929366dffAffected
  • b19bc2945b40b9fd38e835700907ffe8534ef0de to before 9b55b253907e7431210483519c5ad711a37dafa1Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.12Affected
  • before 5.12Not affected
  • 5.15.203 through 5.15.*Not affected
  • 6.1.169 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.6.135 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.82 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.18.23 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 6.19.13 through 6.19.*Not affected
  • 7.0 and laterNot affected

References

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