CVE-2026-68162: Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sctp: avoid auth_enable sysctl UAF during netns teardown proc_sctp_do_auth() updates the SCTP control socket after changing net.sctp.auth_enable. The handler gets the per-net SCTP state from ctl->data, so an already opened sysctl file can still target a network namespace while that namespace is being torn down. SCTP previously registered its per-net sysctls from sctp_defaults_init(), while the control socket is created later from sctp_ctrlsock_init(). This exposed a window during initialization where auth_enable was writable before net->sctp.ctl_sock existed, and a teardown window where auth_enable stayed writable after inet_ctl_sock_destroy() had released the control socket. Move the per-net SCTP sysctl registration into sctp_ctrlsock_init() after sctp_ctl_sock_init() succeeds, and unregister the sysctl table before destroying the control socket in sctp_ctrlsock_exit(). If sysctl registration fails after the control socket was created, destroy the control socket in the same init path. Make sctp_sysctl_net_unregister() tolerate a missing header and clear the saved pointer so init-error and exit paths can safely share the unregister helper.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 5.4.290, before 5.4.292 (fixed in 5.4.292); from 5.10.234, before 5.10.266 (fixed in 5.10.266); from 5.15.177, before 5.15.217 (fixed in 5.15.217); from 6.1.125, before 6.1.184 (fixed in 6.1.184); from 6.6.72, before 6.6.151 (fixed in 6.6.151); from 6.12.10, before 6.12.101 (fixed in 6.12.101); …

Published 2026-08-10. Last modified 2026-08-23.