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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-52982

| EUVDEUVD-2026-38850 CRITICAL
Use After Free (CWE-416)
2026-06-24 Linux GHSA-pjm2-h6fg-mfw7
Critical
Disputed · 9.8 Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Medium–Critical)
Vendor (Linux) PRIMARY
9.8 CRITICAL
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
5.3 MEDIUM

Needs local RTL8150 hardware and a tight SMP timing race (AV:L, AC:H, PR:L); main impact is potential crash (A:H) with only marginal freed-memory read (C:L), no integrity impact.

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
5.5 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Red Hat
5.5 MEDIUM
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

CVSS VectorVendor: Linux

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Jun 28, 2026 - 08:41 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Jun 28, 2026 - 08:22 NVD
9.8 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Jun 24, 2026 - 18:02 EUVD
CVE Published
Jun 24, 2026 - 16:28 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.8
CVE Published
Jun 24, 2026 - 16:28 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

net: usb: rtl8150: fix use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit()

syzbot reported a KASAN slab-use-after-free read in rtl8150_start_xmit() when accessing skb->len for tx statistics after usb_submit_urb() has been called:

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit+0x71f/0x760 drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.c:712 Read of size 4 at addr ffff88810eb7a930 by task kworker/0:4/5226

The URB completion handler write_bulk_callback() frees the skb via dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb). The URB may complete on another CPU in softirq context before usb_submit_urb() returns in the submitter, so by the time the submitter reads skb->len the skb has already been queued to the per-CPU completion_queue and freed by net_tx_action():

CPU A (xmit) CPU B (USB completion softirq) ------------ ------------------------------ dev->tx_skb = skb; usb_submit_urb() --+

|-------> write_bulk_callback() | dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb) | net_tx_action() | napi_skb_cache_put() <-- free netdev->stats.tx_bytes | += skb->len; <-- UAF read

Fix it by caching skb->len before submitting the URB and using the cached value when updating the tx_bytes counter.

The pre-existing tx_bytes semantics are preserved: the counter tracks the original frame length (skb->len), not the ETH_ZLEN/USB-alignment padded "count" value that is handed to the device. Changing that would be a user-visible accounting change and is out of scope for this UAF fix.

AnalysisAI

Use-after-free in the Linux kernel rtl8150 USB-to-Ethernet driver (drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.c) lets the transmit path read freed socket-buffer memory: rtl8150_start_xmit() reads skb->len for TX byte accounting after usb_submit_urb(), but the URB completion handler write_bulk_callback() can free the skb on another CPU first, producing a slab-use-after-free read flagged by KASAN/syzbot. Affected systems are those using an RTL8150-based USB Ethernet adapter; the practical impact is a stale/garbage stat read or a potential crash from freed-memory access rather than reliable info disclosure. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis (not in CISA KEV, EPSS 0.18%/8th percentile), and the issue was found and fixed via upstream syzbot fuzzing.

Technical ContextAI

The flaw is in the rtl8150 driver, which supports Realtek RTL8150 USB 1.1/2.0 Fast Ethernet dongles. The bug is a classic CWE-416 (Use After Free) concurrency race: the SKB (sk_buff) holding the outbound frame is handed to the USB stack via usb_submit_urb(), and ownership of the buffer transfers to the URB completion path. On SMP systems the bulk write can complete in softirq context on another CPU and run write_bulk_callback(), which calls dev_kfree_skb_irq() and lets net_tx_action() recycle the buffer (napi_skb_cache_put) before the original submitting thread dereferences skb->len to update netdev->stats.tx_bytes. The fix caches skb->len in a local variable before calling usb_submit_urb(), preserving the original tx_bytes semantics (counting the unpadded frame length) while removing the post-submit dereference of freed memory.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: update to a fixed stable kernel - 6.1.175, 6.6.141, 6.12.91, 6.18.33, 7.0.10, or 7.1 (also 5.10.258, 5.15.209 for older trees) - or apply the corresponding upstream commit (e.g. https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/23f0e34c64acba15cad4d23e50f41f533da195fa and the sibling stable backports listed in the references). For distro kernels, install the vendor's current package and reboot. As a compensating control where immediate patching is impossible, prevent the vulnerable code path from loading by blacklisting the module (e.g. add 'blacklist rtl8150' / 'install rtl8150 /bin/true' in modprobe config) - trade-off: any RTL8150 USB Ethernet adapter will stop working - or physically restrict/remove RTL8150 USB dongles from affected hosts so the driver is never bound. No separate runtime workaround exists beyond avoiding the hardware/module.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
Image SLES15-SP7-Azure-3P Image SLES15-SP7-Azure-Basic Image SLES15-SP7-Azure-Standard Image SLES15-SP7-HPC-Azure Affected
Image SLES15-SP7-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-Aliyun Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-GDC Image SLES15-SP7-CHOST-BYOS-SAP-CCloud Image SLES15-SP7-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-EC2-ECS-HVM Image SLES15-SP7-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-HPC-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-HPC-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-HPC-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-Hardened-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-Hardened-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-Hardened-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-SAPCAL-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-SAPCAL-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-SAPCAL-GCE Affected
Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Azure-3P Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Hardened-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Hardened-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Hardened-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Hardened-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP7-SAP-Hardened-GCE Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Fixed

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CVE-2026-52982 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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