CVE-2026-45970 bonding: alb: fix UAF in rlb_arp_recv during bond up/down
A use-after-free in the Linux kernel bonding driver during bond up/down cycles can cause a system crash.
- 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-2026-45970?
CVE-2026-45970 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 May 2026. 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:
bonding: alb: fix UAF in rlb_arp_recv during bond up/down
The ALB RX path may access rx_hashtbl concurrently with bond teardown. During rapid bond up/down cycles, rlb_deinitialize() frees rx_hashtbl while RX handlers are still running, leading to a null pointer dereference detected by KASAN.
However, the root cause is that rlb_arp_recv() can still be accessed after setting recv_probe to NULL, which is actually a use-after-free (UAF) issue. That is the reason for using the referenced commit in the Fixes tag.
[ 214.174138] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000001d: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN PTI [ 214.186478] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000000e8-0x00000000000000ef] [ 214.194933] CPU: 30 UID: 0 PID: 2375 Comm: ping Kdump: loaded Not tainted 6.19.0-rc8+ #2 PREEMPT(voluntary) [ 214.205907] Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R730/0WCJNT, BIOS 2.14.0 01/14/2022 [ 214.214357] RIP: 0010:rlb_arp_recv+0x505/0xab0 [bonding] [ 214.220320] Code: 0f 85 2b 05 00 00 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 40 0f b6 ed 48 c1 e5 06 49 03 ad 78 01 00 00 48 8d 7d 28 48 89 fa 48 c1 ea 03 <0f> b6 04 02 84 c0 74 06 0f 8e 12 05 00 00 80 7d 28 00 0f 84 8c 00 [ 214.241280] RSP: 0018:ffffc900073d8870 EFLAGS: 00010206 [ 214.247116] RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: ffff888168556822 RCX: ffff88816855681e [ 214.255082] RDX: 000000000000001d RSI: dffffc0000000000 RDI: 00000000000000e8 [ 214.263048] RBP: 00000000000000c0 R08: 0000000000000002 R09: ffffed11192021c8 [ 214.271013] R10: ffff8888c9010e43 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 1ffff92000e7b119 [ 214.278978] R13: ffff8888c9010e00 R14: ffff888168556822 R15: ffff888168556810 [ 214.286943] FS: 00007f85d2d9cb80(0000) GS:ffff88886ccb3000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 214.295966] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 214.302380] CR2: 00007f0d047b5e34 CR3: 00000008a1c2e002 CR4: 00000000001726f0 [ 214.310347] Call Trace: [ 214.313070] <IRQ> [ 214.315318] ? __pfx_rlb_arp_recv+0x10/0x10 [bonding] [ 214.320975] bond_handle_frame+0x166/0xb60 [bonding] [ 214.326537] ? __pfx_bond_handle_frame+0x10/0x10 [bonding] [ 214.332680] __netif_receive_skb_core.constprop.0+0x576/0x2710 [ 214.339199] ? __pfx_arp_process+0x10/0x10 [ 214.343775] ? sched_balance_find_src_group+0x98/0x630 [ 214.349513] ? __pfx___netif_receive_skb_core.constprop.0+0x10/0x10 [ 214.356513] ? arp_rcv+0x307/0x690 [ 214.360311] ? __pfx_arp_rcv+0x10/0x10 [ 214.364499] ? __lock_acquire+0x58c/0xbd0 [ 214.368975] __netif_receive_skb_one_core+0xae/0x1b0 [ 214.374518] ? __pfx___netif_receive_skb_one_core+0x10/0x10 [ 214.380743] ? lock_acquire+0x10b/0x140 [ 214.385026] process_backlog+0x3f1/0x13a0 [ 214.389502] ? process_backlog+0x3aa/0x13a0 [ 214.394174] __napi_poll.constprop.0+0x9f/0x370 [ 214.399233] net_rx_action+0x8c1/0xe60 [ 214.403423] ? __pfx_net_rx_action+0x10/0x10 [ 214.408193] ? lock_acquire.part.0+0xbd/0x260 [ 214.413058] ? sched_clock_cpu+0x6c/0x540 [ 214.417540] ? mark_held_locks+0x40/0x70 [ 214.421920] handle_softirqs+0x1fd/0x860 [ 214.426302] ? __pfx_handle_softirqs+0x10/0x10 [ 214.431264] ? __neigh_event_send+0x2d6/0xf50 [ 214.436131] do_softirq+0xb1/0xf0 [ 214.439830] </IRQ>
The issue is reproducible by repeatedly running ip link set bond0 up/down while receiving ARP messages, where rlb_arp_recv() can race with rlb_deinitialize() and dereference a freed rx_hashtbl entry.
Fix this by setting recv_probe to NULL and then calling synchronize_net() to wait for any concurrent RX processing to finish. This ensures that no RX handler can access rx_hashtbl after it is freed in bond_alb_deinitialize().
Weakness: CWE-416
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-45970?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-45970?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2026-45970 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-45970 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-45970, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-45970, GHSA-mc9g-h8jv-5cp3, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-45970, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-45970, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-45970 and 1 more.