CVE-2026-31533

About vulnerability

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

net/tls: fix use-after-free in -EBUSY error path of tls_do_encryption

The -EBUSY handling in tls_do_encryption(), introduced by commit 859054147318 (“net: tls: handle backlogging of crypto requests”), has a use-after-free due to double cleanup of encrypt_pending and the scatterlist entry.

When crypto_aead_encrypt() returns -EBUSY, the request is enqueued to the cryptd backlog and the async callback tls_encrypt_done() will be invoked upon completion. That callback unconditionally restores the scatterlist entry (sge->offset, sge->length) and decrements ctx->encrypt_pending. However, if tls_encrypt_async_wait() returns an error, the synchronous error path in tls_do_encryption() performs the same cleanup again, double-decrementing encrypt_pending and double-restoring the scatterlist.

The double-decrement corrupts the encrypt_pending sentinel (initialized to 1), making tls_encrypt_async_wait() permanently skip the wait for pending async callbacks. A subsequent sendmsg can then free the tls_rec via bpf_exec_tx_verdict() while a cryptd callback is still pending, resulting in a use-after-free when the callback fires on the freed record.

Fix this by skipping the synchronous cleanup when the -EBUSY async wait returns an error, since the callback has already handled encrypt_pending and sge restoration.

Affected product:

Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux-meta @ 5.4.0 (+3 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.