CVE-2026-63872

Source
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-63872
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-63872.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2026-63872
Downstream
Published
2026-07-19T14:18:40Z
Modified
2026-08-12T03:51:27Z
Severity
  • 7.5 (High) CVSS_V3 - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CVSS Calculator
Summary
esp: fix page frag reference leak on skb_to_sgvec failure
Details

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

esp: fix page frag reference leak on skb_to_sgvec failure

In esp_output_tail(), when esp->inplace is false, the old skb page frags are replaced with a new page from the xfrm page_frag cache. The source scatterlist (sg) is built from the old frags before the replacement, and esp_ssg_unref() is responsible for releasing the old page references after the crypto operation completes.

However, if the second skb_to_sgvec() call (which builds the destination scatterlist from the new page) fails, the code jumps to error_free which only calls kfree(tmp). The old page frag references captured in the source scatterlist are never released:

  1. sg[] is built from old frags via skb_to_sgvec() (no extra get_page)
  2. nr_frags is set to 1 and frag[0] is replaced with the new page
  3. Second skb_to_sgvec() fails -> goto error_free
  4. kfree(tmp) frees the sg[] memory but old frags are not unref'd
  5. kfree_skb() only releases frag[0] (the new page), not the old ones

Fix this by adding a bool parameter to esp_ssg_unref() that, when true, unconditionally unrefs the source scatterlist frags without checking req->src and req->dst, since those fields are not yet initialized by aead_request_set_crypt() at the point of the error. Existing callers pass false to preserve the original behavior.

The same issue exists in both esp4 and esp6 as the code is identical.

Database specific
{
    "cna_assigner": "Linux",
    "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/63xxx/CVE-2026-63872.json"
}
References

Affected packages

Git / git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git

Affected ranges

Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
cac2661c53f35cbe651bef9b07026a5a05ab8ce0
Fixed
e705b8ff4dd38fb8fe4e6fdc5378a86acea4feb5
Fixed
2982e599fff6faa21c8df147d96fc7af6c1a2f24

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-63872.json"

Linux / Kernel

Package

Name
Kernel

Affected ranges

Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
4.11.0
Fixed
7.0.13

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-63872.json"