Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-23302: Linux Kernel race condition in networking socket pointers

CVE-2026-23302 · Severity: medium · CVSS 4.7 · Published 2026-03-25

Technologies: Linux Kernel. Vendors: Linux.

Executive brief

A race condition vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's networking subsystem. This flaw occurs when multiple processor cores attempt to access or modify the same internal network socket pointers simultaneously. An attacker with local access could potentially exploit this to cause a system crash or denial-of-service, impacting the availability of the affected server or device.

Technical details

A race condition (CWE-362) exists in the Linux kernel's networking stack, specifically within the skmsg layer and other networking components. The vulnerability is caused by concurrent reads and writes to the sk_data_ready and sk_write_space function pointers across different CPUs without proper synchronization. This data race can occur during socket operations in UDP, TCP, and AF_UNIX protocols. An attacker with local user privileges can trigger this race condition to cause a kernel panic or unexpected behavior. The fix involves annotating these pointer accesses with READ_ONCE() and WRITE_ONCE() macros to ensure atomic access and prevent compiler-related reordering or data corruption. Patches have been released for multiple stable kernel branches.

Affected products

  • Linux Linux Kernel 4.20 to 6.6.136, 6.7 to 6.12.82, 6.13 to 6.18.17, 6.19 to 6.19.7, 7.0-rc1, 7.0-rc2

Timeline

  • 2026-02-25: patched: Initial patch authored by Eric Dumazet
  • 2026-03-25: disclosed: CVE-2026-23302 published
  • 2026-05-28: advisory: NVD analysis completed

References