CVE-2026-64579

About vulnerability

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

xfrm: policy: preallocate inexact bins before xfrm_hash_rebuild reinsert

xfrm_hash_rebuild()’s first loop preallocates the bins/chains the reinsert loop needs, so the reinsert (after hlist_del_rcu()) cannot allocate or fail. But its guard is inverted: it skips policies with prefixlen < threshold and preallocates for the rest.

prefixlen < threshold is exactly when policy_hash_bysel() returns NULL and the reinsert takes the allocating xfrm_policy_inexact_insert() path. So the loop preallocates for the exact policies (which never allocate) and skips the inexact ones, whose bin/node is then allocated GFP_ATOMIC during reinsert. On failure the error path only WARN_ONCE()s and continues, leaving a poisoned bydst node; the next rebuild’s hlist_del_rcu() dereferences LIST_POISON2 and takes a GPF. Reachable under memory pressure, deterministic via failslab.

Invert the guard so preallocation covers exactly the reinserted policies; the reinsert then allocates nothing and cannot fail.

Crash: Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xfbd59c0000000024: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead…] … Workqueue: events xfrm_hash_rebuild RIP: 0010:xfrm_hash_rebuild+0x5b3/0x1190 RAX: dead000000000122 (LIST_POISON2 + offset) … Call Trace: hlist_del_rcu (include/linux/rculist.h:599) xfrm_hash_rebuild (net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c:1365) process_one_work (kernel/workqueue.c:3322) worker_thread (kernel/workqueue.c:3486) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:436) ret_from_fork (arch/x86/kernel/process.c:158) ret_from_fork_asm (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:245) … Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.4.0 (+8 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.