Race condition in Linux kernel - CVE-2026-80668
Published: August 28, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU146122
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 5.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-80668
CWE-ID: CWE-362
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 race condition in nf_conntrack expectation handling when removing or expiring expectations. A local user can trigger concurrent expectation operations to cause a denial of service.
The issue involves an expectation accessing a stale exp->master pointer after the associated master connection has already been released.
Affected software
Linux kernel
How to mitigate CVE-2026-80668
Install security update from vendor's repository.
Linux kernel - update to 7.0 rc3