Medium [CVE-2026-52941] avoid NULL deref of conn->lnk in smc_msg_event tracepoint
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-52941 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/smc: avoid NULL deref of conn->lnk in smc_msg_event tracepoint The smc_msg_event tracepoint class, shared by smc_tx_sendmsg and smc_rx_recvmsg, unconditionally dereferences smc->conn.lnk: __string(name, smc->conn.lnk->ibname) conn->lnk is only set for SMC-R; for SMC-D it is NULL.
Other code on these paths already handles this (e.g.!conn->lnk in SMC_STAT_RMB_TX_SIZE_SMALL()).
With the tracepoint enabled, the first sendmsg()/recvmsg() on an SMC-D socket crashes: Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [...] RIP: 0010:strlen+0x1e/0xa0 Call Trace: trace_event_raw_event_smc_msg_event (net/smc/smc_tracepoint.h:44) smc_rx_recvmsg (net/smc/smc_rx.c:515) smc_recvmsg (net/smc/af_smc.c:2859) __sys_recvfrom (net/socket.c:2315) __x64_sys_recvfrom (net/socket.c:2326) do_syscall_64 The faulting address 0x3e0 is offsetof(struct smc_link, ibname), confirming the NULL ->lnk deref.
Enabling the tracepoint requires root, but the trigger itself is unprivileged: socket(AF_SMC,...) has no capability check, and SMC-D negotiation needs no admin step on s390 or on x86 with the loopback ISM device loaded. Log an empty device name for SMC-D instead of dereferencing NULL.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
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