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Linux kernel CVE-2026-72085

| EUVDEUVD-2026-59043 CRITICAL
2026-08-15 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 GHSA-vprc-jrmr-xq56
Critical
Disputed · 9.3 Vendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Medium–Critical)
Vendor (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) PRIMARY
9.3 CRITICAL
AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
6.5 MEDIUM

Attack originates from a guest granted a pvSCSI LUN, so AV:L and PR:L; crossing the guest/host trust boundary gives S:C; the demonstrated impact is availability only (LUN stall / host panic), so C:N/I:N/A:H.

3.1 AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H
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: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:44 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
9.3 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 06:21 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.3
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 06:21 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

scsi: xen: scsiback: Free unsubmitted command instead of double-putting it

scsiback_get_pend_req() obtains a command tag and returns a vscsibk_pend whose embedded se_cmd has only been memset to 0, so its cmd_kref is 0; the se_cmd is initialised (kref_init() via target_init_cmd()) only later, in scsiback_cmd_exec(), on the successful VSCSIIF_ACT_SCSI_CDB path. The two error paths in scsiback_do_cmd_fn() taken before the command is submitted -- a failed scsiback_gnttab_data_map() and an unknown ring_req.act -- call transport_generic_free_cmd(&pending_req->se_cmd, 0), which kref_put()s a refcount of 0. That underflows it ("refcount_t: underflow; use-after-free") and, as the release function is not run, leaks the command tag.

Impact: a pvSCSI guest can leak every command tag of a LUN's session, stopping the LUN, by submitting requests with a bad grant reference or an unknown request type; under panic_on_warn the refcount underflow panics the host.

Add a helper that just returns the tag with target_free_tag() and sends the error response. It frees the tag while the v2p reference still pins the session, and snapshots the response fields beforehand because freeing the tag can let another ring reuse the pending_req slot.

AnalysisAI

Denial of service in the Linux kernel's Xen paravirtualized SCSI backend (xen-scsiback) lets a malicious pvSCSI guest exhaust every command tag of a target LUN's session by driving the pre-submission error paths, which call transport_generic_free_cmd() on an se_cmd whose cmd_kref is still 0. The resulting refcount underflow is a use-after-free that leaks the tag and stops the LUN; on hosts booted with panic_on_warn it crashes the host outright. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis and EPSS is low (0.21%), but the fix is shipped across multiple stable kernel trees.

Technical ContextAI

The flaw lives in drivers/xen/xen-scsiback.c, the dom0/host-side backend of the Xen pvSCSI protocol, which bridges guest SCSI ring requests to the kernel's LIO/target-core (tcm) subsystem. scsiback_get_pend_req() reserves a target command tag and hands back a vscsibk_pend whose embedded se_cmd has only been memset to zero, so cmd_kref is 0; the kref is only initialised later by target_init_cmd()/kref_init() inside scsiback_cmd_exec() on the successful VSCSIIF_ACT_SCSI_CDB path. Two early error paths in scsiback_do_cmd_fn() - a failed scsiback_gnttab_data_map() and an unknown ring_req.act - instead call transport_generic_free_cmd() on that uninitialised command, performing a kref_put() against a zero refcount. This is the classic reference-counting-underflow / use-after-free root cause (CWE-416 / improper refcount; no CWE assigned in the feed): the release function never runs, so the tag is never returned via target_free_tag() and the slot leaks.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: update the kernel to a fixed stable version for your tree - 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.145, 6.12.97, 6.18.40, 7.1.5, or mainline 7.2-rc4 (stable commits linked from https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-72085 and git.kernel.org, e.g. https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1e97c404e44991fb087c38ccd7414f2d326f9b74). Where immediate patching is not possible, the most direct compensating control is to stop exposing pvSCSI LUNs to untrusted or multi-tenant guests (remove the xen-scsiback v2p passthrough for those domains), which eliminates the attack surface at the cost of losing SCSI passthrough for that guest. As a secondary measure, ensure affected hosts are not booted with panic_on_warn=1 so that a triggered refcount underflow degrades to a logged WARN/LUN stall rather than a full host panic - the trade-off is losing fail-fast behaviour on other kernel warnings. These mitigations reduce blast radius but do not fix the underlying leak, so schedule the kernel upgrade.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Affected

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CVE-2026-72085 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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