CVE-2026-64579

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

xfrm: policy: preallocate inexact bins before xfrm_hash_rebuild reinsert

xfrm_hash_rebuild()s first loop preallocates the bins/chains the reinsert loop needs, so the reinsert (after hlist_del_rcu()) cannot allocate or fail. But its guard is inverted: it skips policies with prefixlen < threshold and preallocates for the rest.

prefixlen < threshold is exactly when policy_hash_bysel() returns NULL and the reinsert takes the allocating xfrm_policy_inexact_insert() path. So the loop preallocates for the exact policies (which never allocate) and skips the inexact ones, whose bin/node is then allocated GFP_ATOMIC during reinsert. On failure the error path only WARN_ONCE()s and continues, leaving a poisoned bydst node; the next rebuilds hlist_del_rcu() dereferences LIST_POISON2 and takes a GPF. Reachable under memory pressure, deterministic via failslab.

Invert the guard so preallocation covers exactly the reinserted policies; the reinsert then allocates nothing and cannot fail.

Crash: Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xfbd59c0000000024: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead…] … Workqueue: events xfrm_hash_rebuild RIP: 0010:xfrm_hash_rebuild+0x5b3/0x1190 RAX: dead000000000122 (LIST_POISON2 + offset) … Call Trace: hlist_del_rcu (include/linux/rculist.h:599) xfrm_hash_rebuild (net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c:1365) process_one_work (kernel/workqueue.c:3322) worker_thread (kernel/workqueue.c:3486) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:436) ret_from_fork (arch/x86/kernel/process.c:158) ret_from_fork_asm (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:245) … Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6aa3796d18a9fda953ad76a62b57bf6c145cb9ef
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7acc5ed2f33608a3d83b64f50a5766843b6e2485
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/94c00391a5117530188334f740ce26d3f1256190
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d9d9cc21cc90014724a14c447e3d587be9447107
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f38f8cce2f7e79775b3db7e8a5eacda04ac908e4