CVE-2026-52923

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

ipc: limit next_id allocation to the valid ID range

The checkpoint/restore sysctl path can request the next SysV IPC id through ids->next_id. ipc_idr_alloc() currently forwards that request to idr_alloc() with an open-ended upper bound.

If the valid tail of the SysV IPC id space is full, the allocation can spill beyond ipc_mni. The returned SysV IPC id still uses the normal index encoding, so later lookup and removal can target the wrong slot. This leaves the real IDR entry behind and breaks the IDR state for the object.

The bug is in ipc_idr_alloc() in the checkpoint/restore path.

1. ids->next_id is passed to:

   idr_alloc(&ids->ipcs_idr, new, ipcid_to_idx(next_id), 0, ...)
   

2. The zero upper bound makes the allocation effectively open-ended. Once the valid SysV IPC tail is occupied, idr_alloc() can spill past ipc_mni and allocate an entry beyond the valid IPC id range.

3. The new object id is still encoded with the narrower SysV IPC index width:

   new->id = (new->seq << ipcmni_seq_shift()) + idx
   

4. Later removal goes through ipc_rmid(), which uses:

   ipcid_to_idx(ipcp->id)
   

   That truncates the real IDR index. An object actually stored at a high index can then be removed as if it lived at a low in-range index.

5. For shared memory, shm_destroy() frees the current object anyway, but the real high IDR slot is left behind as a dangling pointer.

6. A subsequent walk of /proc/sysvipc/shm reaches the stale IDR entry and dereferences freed memory.

Prevent this by bounding the requested allocation to ipc_mni so the checkpoint/restore path fails once the valid range is exhausted.

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/157ce2c6836ce0ff19108a819f38df061345425f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3bbe2bb9111ce6967a951bfac79af142d816fae5
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41058d4c3f63ab64901560a704882e0565f4e456
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8c58a92849175f5e2ab7bc2734b3b89afe79f6ef
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a3cc795129e5ec0f8948653a3bf471e7d8852f5e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/af24e202b543ded8a34f1d5d3db54eb916173f04
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bd4be70669af55b974860d13680348cfdf50bbed
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fa0b9b2b7ae3539908d69c2b9ac0d144d9bc5139
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-52923
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2492094
• https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-52923.json