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Advisory severityHigh7.8Red Hat Linux

High [CVE-2026-53262] hold reference to session in pppol2tp_ioctl

This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-53262 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat package: kernel-rt.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2026-53262 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

CVE-2026-53262
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: l2tp: pppol2tp: hold reference to session in pppol2tp_ioctl() pppol2tp_ioctl() read sock->sk->sk_user_data directly without any locks or reference counting.

If a controllable sleep was induced during copy_from_user() (e.g. via a userfaultfd page fault sleep), a concurrent socket close could trigger pppol2tp_session_close() asynchronously. This frees the l2tp_session structure via the l2tp_session_del_work workqueue.

Upon resuming, the ioctl thread dereferences the stale session pointer, resulting in a Use-After-Free (UAF). Fix this by securely fetching the session reference using the RCU-safe, refcounted helper pppol2tp_sock_to_session(sk) on entry.

This locks the session's refcount across the sleep. We structured the function to exit via standard err breaks, guaranteeing that l2tp_session_put() is cleanly called on all return paths to drop the reference.

To preserve existing behavior we validate the session and its magic signature only for the specific L2TP commands that require it. This ensures that generic/unknown ioctls called on an unconnected socket still return -ENOIOCTLCMD and correctly fall back to generic handlers (e.g. in sock_do_ioctl()).

This Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability arises from improper handling of session references within the `pppol2tp_ioctl()` function.

Is CVE-2026-53262 exploited?

No exploitation is reported in the sources VulniPulse tracks: CVE-2026-53262 is not in the CISA KEV catalog (checked ) and this advisory does not report exploitation. That is not proof the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53262?

The advisory VulniPulse tracks names no fixed release. Follow Red Hat's guidance for workarounds and updates.

Confirm against the vendor advisory before you patch.

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 15 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 15 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation

The source record does not include mitigation steps. That does not mean no fix exists. Read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.

Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 15 days ago·verify at source

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