CVE-2026-52995 net/rds: zero per-item info buffer before handing it to visitors
A local unprivileged user can read uninitialized kernel stack memory via RDS info queries, potentially leaking sensitive kernel pointers.
- 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-2026-52995?
CVE-2026-52995 is a medium-severity 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:
net/rds: zero per-item info buffer before handing it to visitors
rds_for_each_conn_info() and rds_walk_conn_path_info() both hand a caller-allocated on-stack u64 buffer to a per-connection visitor and then copy the full item_len bytes back to user space via rds_info_copy() regardless of how much of the buffer the visitor actually wrote.
rds_ib_conn_info_visitor() and rds6_ib_conn_info_visitor() only write a subset of their output struct when the underlying rds_connection is not in state RDS_CONN_UP (src/dst addr, tos, sl and the two GIDs via explicit memsets). Several u32 fields (max_send_wr, max_recv_wr, max_send_sge, rdma_mr_max, rdma_mr_size, cache_allocs) and the 2-byte alignment hole between sl and cache_allocs remain as whatever stack contents preceded the visitor call and are then memcpy_to_user()'d out to user space.
struct rds_info_rdma_connection and struct rds6_info_rdma_connection are the only rds_info_* structs in include/uapi/linux/rds.h that are not marked __attribute__((packed)), so they have a real alignment hole. The other info visitors (rds_conn_info_visitor, rds6_conn_info_visitor, rds_tcp_tc_info, ...) write all fields of their packed output struct today and are not known to be vulnerable, but a future visitor that adds a conditional write-path would have the same bug.
Reproduction on a kernel built without CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL_ZERO=y: a local unprivileged user opens AF_RDS, sets SO_RDS_TRANSPORT=IB, binds to a local address on an RDMA-capable netdev (rxe soft-RoCE on any netdev is sufficient), sendto()'s any peer on the same subnet (fails cleanly but installs an rds_connection in the global hash in RDS_CONN_CONNECTING), then calls getsockopt(SOL_RDS, RDS_INFO_IB_CONNECTIONS). The returned 68-byte item contains 26 bytes of stack garbage including kernel text/data pointers:
0..7 0a 63 00 01 0a 63 00 02 src=10.99.0.1 dst=10.99.0.2 8..39 00 ... gids (memset-zeroed) 40..47 e0 92 a3 81 ff ff ff ff kernel pointer (max_send_wr) 48..55 7f 37 b5 81 ff ff ff ff kernel pointer (rdma_mr_max) 56..59 01 00 08 00 rdma_mr_size (garbage) 60..61 00 00 tos, sl 62..63 00 00 alignment padding 64..67 18 00 00 00 cache_allocs (garbage)
Fix by zeroing the per-item buffer in both rds_for_each_conn_info() and rds_walk_conn_path_info() before invoking the visitor. This covers the IPv4/IPv6 IB visitors and hardens all current and future visitors against the same class of bug.
No functional change for visitors that fully populate their output.
Changes in v2: - retarget at the net tree (subject prefix "[PATCH net v2]", net/rds: prefix in the title) - pick up Reviewed-by tags from Sharath Srinivasan and Allison Henderson
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-52995?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-52995?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-52995 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-52995 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-52995, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-52995, GHSA-735g-xvv4-mj9w, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-52995, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-52995, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-52995 and 2 more.