Bug 2513343 (CVE-2026-68138) - CVE-2026-68138 kernel: net/sched: serialize qdisc_rtab_list against concurrent get/put
Summary: CVE-2026-68138 kernel: net/sched: serialize qdisc_rtab_list against concurren...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-68138
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-10 12:32 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-18 03:27 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-10 12:32:03 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/sched: serialize qdisc_rtab_list against concurrent get/put

qdisc_get_rtab() and qdisc_put_rtab() mutate the process-global singly
linked list qdisc_rtab_list and a plain non-atomic 'int refcnt' with no
lock. This was only safe because every caller historically held the RTNL
mutex, which serialized all rate-table lookups, inserts and frees.

That invariant no longer holds. cls_flower sets
TCF_PROTO_OPS_DOIT_UNLOCKED, so tc_new_tfilter() keeps rtnl_held == false
for it and sets TCA_ACT_FLAGS_NO_RTNL. That flag propagates through
tcf_exts_validate_ex() -> tcf_action_init() -> tcf_action_init_1() ->
tcf_police_init(), which calls qdisc_get_rtab()/qdisc_put_rtab() with the
RTNL mutex NOT held. Two RTM_NEWTFILTER requests on different CPUs, each
adding a flower filter with a police action carrying the same rate, then
race on qdisc_rtab_list and on the non-atomic refcnt, leading to a
use-after-free / double-free of the kmalloc-2k struct qdisc_rate_table.
qdisc_rtab_list is a single global (not per-netns), so the corrupted
object is shared system-wide.

  BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in qdisc_put_rtab+0x12f/0x160
   qdisc_put_rtab+0x12f/0x160
   tcf_police_init+0xda9/0x1590
   tcf_action_init_1+0x460/0x6b0
   tcf_action_init+0x439/0xa40
   tcf_exts_validate_ex+0x42d/0x550
   fl_change+0xddd/0x7da0
   tc_new_tfilter+0xaa7/0x2420
   rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x95e/0xe90
  which belongs to the cache kmalloc-2k of size 2048

Protect qdisc_rtab_list and the refcount with a dedicated spinlock. The
(sleeping, GFP_KERNEL) allocation in qdisc_get_rtab() is performed before
taking the lock; if a concurrent inserter added an identical table in the
meantime the freshly allocated one is freed under the lock, so no
duplicate is leaked. qdisc_put_rtab() now decrements the refcount and
unlinks under the same lock.

Comment 5 Akiyoshi Kurita 2026-08-18 03:27:16 UTC
Possible mitigations:

System-wide:
sysctl -w user.max_user_namespaces=0

Per systemd unit:
RestrictNamespaces=yes

These settings prevent creation of user namespaces required by the published PoC.

Note: Setting user.max_user_namespaces=0 system-wide will break rootless containers (e.g., rootless podman) and other applications relying on unprivileged user namespaces.


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