CVE-2026-53181

Updated on 25 Jun 2026

Severity

5.5 Medium severity

Details

CVSS score
5.5
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Overview

About vulnerability

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

vsock/vmci: fix sk_ack_backlog leak on failed handshake

When vmci_transport_recv_connecting_server() returns an error, vmci_transport_recv_listen() calls vsock_remove_pending() but never calls sk_acceptq_removed(). This leaves sk_ack_backlog incremented permanently.

Repeated handshake failures (malformed packets, queue pair alloc failure, event subscribe failure) cause sk_ack_backlog to climb toward sk_max_ack_backlog. Once it reaches the limit the listener permanently refuses all new connections with -ECONNREFUSED, a silent denial of service requiring a process restart to recover.

The two existing sk_acceptq_removed() calls in af_vsock.c do not cover this path: line 764 checks vsock_is_pending() which returns false after vsock_remove_pending(), and line 1889 is only reached on successful accept().

Fix by balancing sk_acceptq_added() with sk_acceptq_removed() on the error path.

Details

Fixes

KernelCare state

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.

Operating system Status Covered kernels
Debian 11 Planned
Debian 11 cloud Planned
Debian 12 In Rollout
40 kernels
  • 6.1.38-1
  • 6.1.38-2
  • 6.1.38-4
  • 6.1.52-1
  • 6.1.55-1
  • 6.1.64-1
  • 6.1.66-1
  • 6.1.69-1
  • 6.1.76-1
  • 6.1.27-1
  • 6.1.67-1
  • 6.1.85-1
  • 6.1.90-1
  • 6.1.94-1
  • 6.1.99-1
  • 6.1.106-3
  • 6.1.112-1
  • 6.1.115-1
  • 6.1.119-1
  • 6.1.123-1
  • 6.1.128-1
  • 6.1.124-1
  • 6.1.129-1
  • 6.1.133-1
  • 6.1.135-1
  • 6.1.137-1
  • 6.1.140-1
  • 6.1.139-1
  • 6.1.147-1
  • 6.1.148-1
  • 6.1.153-1
  • 6.1.158-1
  • 6.1.159-1
  • 6.1.162-1
  • 6.1.164-1
  • 6.1.170-1
  • 6.1.170-3
  • 6.1.172-1
  • 6.1.174-1
  • 6.1.170-2