CVE-2026-52926 batman-adv: clear current gateway during teardown
A use-after-free vulnerability in the batman-adv kernel module allows attackers to cause a denial of service by triggering a stale gateway reference during mesh teardown.
- 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-2026-52926?
CVE-2026-52926 is a medium-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 24 Jun 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:
batman-adv: clear current gateway during teardown
batadv_gw_node_free() removes the gateway list entries during mesh teardown, but it does not clear the currently selected gateway. This leaves stale gateway state behind across cleanup and can break a later mesh recreation.
Clear bat_priv->gw.curr_gw before walking the gateway list so the selected gateway reference is dropped as part of teardown.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-52926?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-52926?
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-2026-52926 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-52926 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-90440, BELL-CVE-2026-52926, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-52926, GHSA-r223-r4pf-42r9, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-52926, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-52926 and 3 more.