Bug 2507136 (CVE-2026-64525) - CVE-2026-64525 kernel: xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit to .pre_exit
Summary: CVE-2026-64525 kernel: xfrm: move policy_bydst RCU sync from per-netns .exit ...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-64525
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-07-25 10:06 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-07-29 15:10 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-25 10:06:55 UTC
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.


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