net: openvswitch: fix potential UAF on meter attach failure
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 3 without a fix
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: fix potential UAF on meter attach failure While attaching a newly created meter attach_meter() function makes the new meter visible to other CPUs but can still fail afterwards. On failure, it detaches the meter back and returns an error. However, this is an unexpected behavior for the ovs_meter_cmd_set() that uses a plain kfree(meter) on attach failure without waiting for RCU readers to stop using it, assuming it was never visible. This is never a problem for ovs-vswitchd as it always creates meters before creating any flows that use them. But the UAF can be triggered with a custom application using uAPI: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in ovs_meter_execute (net/openvswitch/meter.c:653) Read of size 8 at addr ffff88810d152650 by task meter/2508 Call Trace: ovs_meter_execute (net/openvswitch/meter.c:653) do_execute_actions (net/openvswitch/actions.c:1407) ovs_execute_actions (net/openvswitch/actions.c:1584) ovs_packet_cmd_execute (net/openvswitch/datapath.c:703) ... netlink_sendmsg (af_netlink.c:1900) Allocated by task 2519: __kasan_kmalloc (mm/kasan/common.c:398 mm/kasan/common.c:415) ovs_meter_cmd_set (net/openvswitch/meter.c:422) ... netlink_sendmsg (af_netlink.c:1900) Freed by task 2519: kfree (mm/slub.c:2705 mm/slub.c:6405 mm/slub.c:6720) ovs_meter_cmd_set (net/openvswitch/meter.c:479) ... netlink_sendmsg (af_netlink.c:1900) Fix that by making sure attach_meter() doesn't make the meter visible until all the checks are done and the function can't fail anymore. This also makes sure the "hash" value is calculated after the potential re-sizing of the table. Reported by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative as ZDI-CAN-31642.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 5.10.265, 5.15.216, 6.1.183, 6.6.151, 6.12.103, 6.18.44, 7.1.8, 7.2
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 2 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-74465
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-qwfg-529h-q8w8
- 2026-10-18 CISA SSVC decision points changed
References
Other 8
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/496f3013c6ff759249abcfb2da2361c1a3e2e66d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ddc0ef4217cc697c6ba1a295cc1ea42423ec68ac
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b0de3b58dac3b02b528f72ee0397728aed11f993
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0310d1fa7f9debd0d89629e9f14c7975a47eaa9a
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4d03e5fa3fbb1df15258a1eb3d6963f0d65659b3
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/90623c9499627803ef3f04fa25a3199402d4fb95
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/431a295d93f76fbdb6a7cfce92a9e3dfee1e5d61
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a58a2b0ce354df531ebc71fc870058c2feb59f6b
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Sources
- CVE-2026-74465 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-74465 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-qwfg-529h-q8w8 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-74465 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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