CVE-2026-80979: Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/smc: unregister the connection before draining the rx tasklet smc_conn_free() calls smc_ism_unset_conn() only while the link group is still on its device list, and never sets conn->killed. smc_lgr_terminate_sched() unlinks the group immediately and defers killing its connections to a work item, so a connection freed in that window keeps its smcd->conn[] slot with both gates in smcd_handle_irq() open, and the device can re-arm the receive tasklet after tasklet_kill() has returned. On the DMB-nocopy path the ghost send buffer is freed right after that drain, so the re-armed tasklet dereferences it. Unregister unconditionally and drain before the detach at both teardown sites, mirroring rmb_desc, which smc_buf_unuse() releases after the drain. Clear conn->sndbuf_desc before freeing it as well, so a reader that samples the pointer cannot get one that is already freed.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 6.6.66, before 6.6.157 (fixed in 6.6.157); from 6.10, before 6.12.109 (fixed in 6.12.109); from 6.13, before 6.18.50 (fixed in 6.18.50); from 6.19, before 7.2.4 (fixed in 7.2.4)

Published 2026-09-11. Last modified 2026-09-14.