CVE-2026-80613 veth: fix NAPI leak in XDP enable error path

What is CVE-2026-80613?

CVE-2026-80613 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux, published on 28 Aug 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:

veth: fix NAPI leak in XDP enable error path

During XDP enablement in veth, if xdp_rxq_info_reg() or xdp_rxq_info_reg_mem_model() fails, the driver rolls back the changes.

However, the rollback loop: for (i--; i >= start; i--) {

decrements the loop index 'i' before the first iteration. This correctly skips unregistering the rxq for the failed index 'i' (as registration failed or was already cleaned up), but it also erroneously skips calling netif_napi_deli() for rq[i].xdp_napi.

Since netif_napi_add() was already called for index 'i', this leaves a dangling napi_struct in the device's napi_list. When the veth device is later destroyed, the freed queue memory (which contains the leaked NAPI structure) can be reused.

The subsequent device teardown iterates the NAPI list and corrupts the reallocated memory, leading to UAF.

Fix this by explicitly deleting the NAPI association for the failed index 'i' before rolling back the successfully configured queues.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-80613?

How do I fix CVE-2026-80613?

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-2026-80613 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-80613 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-80613, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-80613, GHSA-6pj2-mj5g-xmxv, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-80613.