Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime in Linux kernel - CVE-2026-63872
Published: July 20, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU138781
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 6.8 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-63872
CWE-ID: CWE-772
Exploitation vector: Local access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a local user to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to a reference leak in esp4.c and esp6.c ESP output handling when processing error paths after building scatterlists for non-inplace encryption. A local user can trigger skb_to_sgvec() failure to cause a denial of service.
The issue occurs in both IPv4 and IPv6 ESP code paths when old skb page fragments are replaced with a new page and the destination scatterlist construction fails before the request fields are initialized.
Affected software
Linux kernel
How to mitigate CVE-2026-63872
Install security update from vendor's repository.
Linux kernel - update to 7.0 rc3