CVE-2026-74631: Linux

High severity, CVSS 8.4. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: smc: fix splice entry lifetime imbalance in smc_rx_splice smc_rx_splice() passes pages to splice_to_pipe() before taking the references that cover the lifetime of each splice entry. In the VM-backed RMB path, splice_to_pipe() may drop unqueued entries through smc_rx_spd_release(), while queued entries are released later via the pipe buffer callback. The old post-splice accounting also derives the number of queued VM pages from an offset mutated while building the descriptor, and a multi-page splice pairs one sock_hold() with multiple sock_put() calls. Take the page and socket references for every candidate entry before splice_to_pipe(), and drop the matching private state, page reference, and socket reference from smc_rx_spd_release() for entries that never get queued. This fixes a refcount imbalance that can underflow page refcounts and trigger a use-after-free.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 4.18, before 5.10.266 (fixed in 5.10.266); from 5.11, before 5.15.217 (fixed in 5.15.217); from 5.16, before 6.1.183 (fixed in 6.1.183); from 6.2, before 6.6.152 (fixed in 6.6.152); from 6.7, before 6.12.104 (fixed in 6.12.104); from 6.13, before 6.18.45 (fixed in 6.18.45); …

Published 2026-08-22. Last modified 2026-08-25.