Bug 2502603 (CVE-2026-64119)

Summary: CVE-2026-64119 kernel: l2tp: use list_del_rcu in l2tp_session_unhash
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) implementation. An unprivileged local user can exploit a vulnerability in the session unhashing mechanism by concurrently issuing session management commands. This can lead to an infinite loop, causing the host CPU to be indefinitely pinned and resulting in a denial of service (DoS) for the system.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-19 17:08:26 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

l2tp: use list_del_rcu in l2tp_session_unhash

An unprivileged local user can pin a host CPU indefinitely in
l2tp_session_get_by_ifname() by issuing L2TP_CMD_SESSION_GET on
L2TP_ATTR_IFNAME concurrently with L2TP_CMD_SESSION_CREATE and
L2TP_CMD_SESSION_DELETE on the same tunnel. All three commands take
GENL_UNS_ADMIN_PERM, so CAP_NET_ADMIN in the netns user namespace
suffices; on any host that has l2tp_core loaded the trigger is
reachable from a standard `unshare -Urn` sandbox.

l2tp_session_unhash() removes a session from tunnel->session_list
with list_del_init(), but that list is walked by
l2tp_session_get_by_ifname() with list_for_each_entry_rcu() under
rcu_read_lock_bh(). list_del_init() leaves the deleted entry's
next/prev self-pointing; a reader that has loaded the entry and
then advances pos->list.next reads &session->list, container_of()s
back to the same session, and list_for_each_entry_rcu() never
reaches the list head. The CPU stays in strcmp() inside the
walker, with BH and preemption disabled, so RCU grace periods on
the host stall behind it and the wedged thread cannot be killed
(SIGKILL is delivered on syscall return).

Use list_del_rcu() to match the existing list_add_rcu() in
l2tp_session_register(); the deleted session remains visible to
in-flight walkers with consistent next/prev pointers until
kfree_rcu() in l2tp_session_free() releases it. tunnel->session_list
has exactly one list_del_init() call site; the list_del_init
(&session->clist) at l2tp_core.c:533 operates on the per-collision
list, which is not walked under RCU. list_empty(&session->list) is
not used anywhere in net/l2tp/ after the unhash point, so dropping
the post-delete self-init is safe; the fix has no userspace-visible
behavior change.