CVE-2026-45964

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

SUNRPC: fix gss_auth kref leak in gss_alloc_msg error path

Commit 5940d1cf9f42 (SUNRPC: Rebalance a kref in auth_gss.c) added a kref_get(&gss_auth->kref) call to balance the gss_put_auth() done in gss_release_msg(), but forgot to add a corresponding kref_put() on the error path when kstrdup_const() fails.

If service_name is non-NULL and kstrdup_const() fails, the function jumps to err_put_pipe_version which calls put_pipe_version() and kfree(gss_msg), but never releases the gss_auth reference. This leads to a kref leak where the gss_auth structure is never freed.

Add a forward declaration for gss_free_callback() and call kref_put() in the err_put_pipe_version error path to properly release the reference taken earlier.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3b2b6c42070ce4204936288253baf101e995c2d3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/655c9ba9915f05266998dbbf4b76b3c79b8a70aa
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1bc9561b617ec7e2d09e6c134d1db8fcf9ca4a6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a2d4e9a76de0b2178001214ba5de5bf94a7354aa
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b559be2ec6cdb2e9c2c36c23fbbd4690d8a5c3f7
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c20f925214249bb4fc04f7e197bea142a6438af6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/dd2fdc3504592d85e549c523b054898a036a6afe
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e464e26b2457005c87e158570498274b9f3b90c7