Bug 2461503 (CVE-2026-31669) - CVE-2026-31669 kernel: mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_established
Summary: CVE-2026-31669 kernel: mptcp: fix slab-use-after-free in __inet_lookup_establ...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-31669
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: 2026-04-24 15:05 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-05-15 13:28 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-04-24 15:05:20 UTC
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.


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