Medium [CVE-2026-68290] Use-after-free vulnerability in RDS TCP can lead to system instability
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-68290 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: rds: tcp: unregister sysctl before tearing down listen socket rds_tcp_exit_net() frees the per-netns RDS TCP listen socket via rds_tcp_kill_sock() before unregistering the per-netns sysctl table.
Since rds_tcp_skbuf_handler() derives the netns from rtn->rds_tcp_listen_sock->sk, a concurrent sysctl write can race with netns teardown and dereference the freed socket/sk.
KASAN reports the race as: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rds_tcp_skbuf_handler+0x2aa/0x2e0 rds_tcp_skbuf_handler net/rds/tcp.c:721 proc_sys_call_handler fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c vfs_write fs/read_write.c __x64_sys_pwrite64 fs/read_write.c Fix this by unregistering the RDS TCP sysctl table before calling rds_tcp_kill_sock(). unregister_net_sysctl_table() prevents new sysctl handlers from starting and waits for in-flight handlers to finish, so the listen socket can then be released safely.
The fix was tested against the linked reproducer. A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) TCP implementation.
A race condition can occur during network namespace teardown, where a concurrent system control (sysctl) write operation attempts to access a socket that has already been freed. This use-after-free vulnerability can lead to system instability or a denial of service.
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 1 hour 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 1 hour 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 1 hour ago·verify at source
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