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Medium5.5Red Hat Linux

Medium [CVE-2026-74628] fix use-after-free of the socket by its timers

This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-74628.

CVE-2026-74628 Published Aug 22, 2026Updated by vendor Aug 22, 2026
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxUnclassified
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Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/x25: fix use-after-free of the socket by its timers The x25 timers are armed with mod_timer() and cancelled with timer_delete(), so a pending timer holds no reference on the socket and a cancel does not wait for a callback already running on another CPU. x25_heartbeat_expiry() also rearms unconditionally, so it can reinstall sk->sk_timer after __x25_destroy_socket() has passed its cancel point.

The following __sock_put() frees the socket while the timer is still queued, and the next expiry uses freed memory.

KASAN reports a slab-use-after-free on the kmalloc-2k object freed by close(). timer_delete_sync() cannot be used here: x25_heartbeat_expiry() and x25_timer_expiry() both reach the cancels from inside the timer they would wait on, through __x25_destroy_socket() and x25_disconnect().

Arm the timers with sk_reset_timer() and cancel them with sk_stop_timer() so that an armed timer owns a reference, and release it in both expiry handlers. Rearm the heartbeat only while sk_hashed(sk) is still true, since __x25_destroy_socket() unlinks the socket before dropping it.

Arm the deferred destroy timer the same way and drop its reference in x25_destroy_timer(). Reproduced on net with KASAN, with the heartbeat period shortened so the window recurs.

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 48 minutes 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 48 minutes 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 48 minutes ago·verify at source

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