CVE-2026-53262: linux Use After Free

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-53262 is a high (CVSS 7.8) Use After Free vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1.6% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 25-06-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 19-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: l2tp: pppol2tp: hold reference to session in pppol2tp_ioctl() pppol2tp_ioctl() read sock->sk->sk_user_data directly without any locks or reference counting. If a controllable sleep was induced during copy_from_user() (e.g. via a userfaultfd page fault sleep), a concurrent socket close could trigger pppol2tp_session_close() asynchronously. This frees the l2tp_session structure via the l2tp_session_del_work workqueue. Upon resuming, the ioctl thread dereferences the stale session pointer, resulting in a Use-After-Free (UAF). Fix this by securely fetching the session reference using the RCU-safe, refcounted helper pppol2tp_sock_to_session(sk) on entry. This locks the session's refcount across the sleep. We structured the function to exit via standard err breaks, guaranteeing that l2tp_session_put() is cleanly called on all return paths to drop the reference. To preserve existing behavior we validate the session and its magic signature only for the specific L2TP commands that require it. This ensures that generic/unknown ioctls called on an unconnected socket still return -ENOIOCTLCMD and correctly fall back to generic handlers (e.g. in sock_do_ioctl()).

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.