CVE-2026-52982: Linux Kernel

Critical severity, CVSS 9.8. EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: usb: rtl8150: fix use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit() syzbot reported a KASAN slab-use-after-free read in rtl8150_start_xmit() when accessing skb->len for tx statistics after usb_submit_urb() has been called: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit+0x71f/0x760 drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.c:712 Read of size 4 at addr ffff88810eb7a930 by task kworker/0:4/5226 The URB completion handler write_bulk_callback() frees the skb via dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb). The URB may complete on another CPU in softirq context before usb_submit_urb() returns in the submitter, so by the time the submitter reads skb->len the skb has already been queued to the per-CPU completion_queue and freed by net_tx_action(): CPU A (xmit) CPU B (USB completion softirq) ------------ ------------------------------ dev->tx_skb = skb; usb_submit_urb() --+ |-------> write_bulk_callback() | dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb) | net_tx_action() | napi_skb_cache_put() <-- free netdev->stats.tx_bytes | += skb->len; <-- UAF read Fix it by caching skb->len before submitting the URB and using the cached value when updating the tx_bytes counter. The pre-existing tx_bytes semantics are preserved: the counter tracks the original frame length (skb->len), not the ETH_ZLEN/USB-alignment padded "count" value that is handed to the device. Changing that would be a user-visible accounting change and is out of scope for this UAF fix.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 2.6.12.1, before 5.10.258 (fixed in 5.10.258); from 5.11, before 5.15.209 (fixed in 5.15.209); from 5.16, before 6.1.175 (fixed in 6.1.175); from 6.2, before 6.6.141 (fixed in 6.6.141); from 6.7, before 6.12.91 (fixed in 6.12.91); from 6.13, before 6.18.33 (fixed in 6.18.33); …

Published 2026-06-24. Last modified 2026-07-14.