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VulniPulse
Advisory severityHigh7.0Red Hat Linux

High [CVE-2026-72323] Fix potential UAF in igmp_gq_start_timer

This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-72323 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

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

CVE-2026-72323 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

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Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipv4: igmp: Fix potential UAF in igmp_gq_start_timer() A race condition exists between device teardown (inetdev_destroy) and incoming IGMP query processing (igmp_rcv), leading to a Use-After-Free in the IGMP timer callback.

During device destruction, inetdev_destroy() drops the primary reference to in_device, which can drop its refcount to 0. The actual freeing of in_device memory is deferred via RCU (using call_rcu()).

Concurrently, igmp_rcv() runs under RCU read lock and obtains the in_device pointer. Because the memory is RCU-protected, CPU-0 can safely dereference in_device even if its refcount has hit 0.

However, if CPU-0 calls igmp_gq_start_timer() and re-arms the timer, it attempts to acquire a reference using in_dev_hold(). This increments the refcount from 0 to 1, triggering a "refcount_t: addition on 0" warning.

Since the in_device memory is still scheduled to be freed after the RCU grace period (as the free callback does not check the refcount again), the device is freed while the timer is still armed. When the timer expires, it accesses the freed memory, causing a kernel panic.

Fix this by using refcount_inc_not_zero() (via a new helper in_dev_hold_safe()) to prevent acquiring a reference if the device is already being destroyed. A similar issue in IPv6 MLD is fixed in a subsequent 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 22 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 22 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 22 days ago·verify at source

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