CVE-2024-26780 af_unix: Fix task hung while purging oob_skb in GC.

Medium 5.5 Published 4 Apr 2024 Updated 11 May 2026

A local attacker can cause a task hang and infinite loop in the Linux kernel's Unix socket garbage collection, leading to denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2024-26780?

CVE-2024-26780 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 4 Apr 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

af_unix: Fix task hung while purging oob_skb in GC.

syzbot reported a task hung; at the same time, GC was looping infinitely in list_for_each_entry_safe() for OOB skb. [0]

syzbot demonstrated that the list_for_each_entry_safe() was not actually safe in this case.

A single skb could have references for multiple sockets. If we free such a skb in the list_for_each_entry_safe(), the current and next sockets could be unlinked in a single iteration.

unix_notinflight() uses list_del_init() to unlink the socket, so the prefetched next socket forms a loop itself and list_for_each_entry_safe() never stops.

Here, we must use while() and make sure we always fetch the first socket.

[0]: Sending NMI from CPU 0 to CPUs 1: NMI backtrace for cpu 1 CPU: 1 PID: 5065 Comm: syz-executor236 Not tainted 6.8.0-rc3-syzkaller-00136-g1f719a2f3fa6 #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 01/25/2024 RIP: 0010:preempt_count arch/x86/include/asm/preempt.h:26 [inline] RIP: 0010:check_kcov_mode kernel/kcov.c:173 [inline] RIP: 0010:__sanitizer_cov_trace_pc+0xd/0x60 kernel/kcov.c:207 Code: cc cc cc cc 66 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 f3 0f 1e fa 65 48 8b 14 25 40 c2 03 00 <65> 8b 05 b4 7c 78 7e a9 00 01 ff 00 48 8b 34 24 74 0f f6 c4 01 74 RSP: 0018:ffffc900033efa58 EFLAGS: 00000283 RAX: ffff88807b077800 RBX: ffff88807b077800 RCX: 1ffffffff27b1189 RDX: ffff88802a5a3b80 RSI: ffffffff8968488d RDI: ffff88807b077f70 RBP: ffffc900033efbb0 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: fffffbfff27a900c R10: ffffffff93d48067 R11: ffffffff8ae000eb R12: ffff88807b077800 R13: dffffc0000000000 R14: ffff88807b077e40 R15: 0000000000000001 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8880b9500000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000564f4fc1e3a8 CR3: 000000000d57a000 CR4: 00000000003506f0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <NMI> </NMI> <TASK> unix_gc+0x563/0x13b0 net/unix/garbage.c:319 unix_release_sock+0xa93/0xf80 net/unix/af_unix.c:683 unix_release+0x91/0xf0 net/unix/af_unix.c:1064 __sock_release+0xb0/0x270 net/socket.c:659 sock_close+0x1c/0x30 net/socket.c:1421 __fput+0x270/0xb80 fs/file_table.c:376 task_work_run+0x14f/0x250 kernel/task_work.c:180 exit_task_work include/linux/task_work.h:38 [inline] do_exit+0xa8a/0x2ad0 kernel/exit.c:871 do_group_exit+0xd4/0x2a0 kernel/exit.c:1020 __do_sys_exit_group kernel/exit.c:1031 [inline] __se_sys_exit_group kernel/exit.c:1029 [inline] __x64_sys_exit_group+0x3e/0x50 kernel/exit.c:1029 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:52 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xd5/0x270 arch/x86/entry/common.c:83 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6f/0x77 RIP: 0033:0x7f9d6cbdac09 Code: Unable to access opcode bytes at 0x7f9d6cbdabdf. RSP: 002b:00007fff5952feb8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 00000000000000e7 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 00007f9d6cbdac09 RDX: 000000000000003c RSI: 00000000000000e7 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: 00007f9d6cc552b0 R08: ffffffffffffffb8 R09: 0000000000000006 R10: 0000000000000006 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 00007f9d6cc552b0 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00007f9d6cc55d00 R15: 00007f9d6cbabe70 </TASK>

Weakness: CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-26780?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-26780?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2024-26780 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-26780 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2024-26780, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-26780, GHSA-95rc-29j2-q3vr, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26780.