Executive brief
A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's networking component responsible for local inter-process communication (AF_UNIX). When a specific connection process fails, the system may fail to reclaim memory, which could eventually lead to system instability or a denial of service if triggered repeatedly. This issue primarily affects the reliability of the operating system rather than direct data exposure.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in net/unix/af_unix.c within the unix_stream_connect() function. The vulnerability is triggered when prepare_peercred() fails after a new socket (newsk) has already been allocated via unix_create1(). Because the error path does not call unix_release_sock() for the newly created socket in this specific failure scenario, the allocated memory is never freed. The fix involves reordering the operations so that prepare_peercred() is called before socket allocation. This is a local vulnerability that could be exploited by a local user to cause gradual kernel memory exhaustion.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.12, 6.13, 6.14
Timeline
- 2026-02-07: other: Vulnerability fixed in kernel source by Kuniyuki Iwashima
- 2026-05-27: disclosed: CVE published to NVD