CVE-2026-74493: Linux

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/smc: fix socket use-after-free during link group termination __smc_lgr_terminate() drops conns_lock after finding a connection in lgr->conns_all, but before taking a reference on its socket. The connection is embedded in the socket, and its registration reference protects it only while the connection remains in the tree. A concurrent close can unregister the connection and drop that reference, freeing the socket before the termination worker reaches sock_hold(). The race is reachable when close overlaps link group termination. Local stress testing reproduced the use-after-free and KASAN reported: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in __smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc] Write of size 4 by task kworker/3:3 Workqueue: events smc_lgr_terminate_work [smc] __smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc] The socket was allocated by smc_create(), freed through slab_free_after_rcu_debug(), and was followed by: refcount_t: addition on 0; use-after-free. __smc_lgr_terminate.part.0 [smc] Take the socket reference while conns_lock still protects the tree entry. The unregister path then cannot drop the last reference until termination has finished using the socket.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 5.5, before 5.10.265 (fixed in 5.10.265); from 5.11, before 5.15.216 (fixed in 5.15.216); from 5.16, before 6.1.183 (fixed in 6.1.183); from 6.2, before 6.6.151 (fixed in 6.6.151); from 6.7, before 6.12.103 (fixed in 6.12.103); from 6.13, before 6.18.44 (fixed in 6.18.44); …

Published 2026-08-15. Last modified 2026-08-19.