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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-72466

| EUVDEUVD-2026-59365 CRITICAL
2026-08-15 Linux GHSA-7c5h-c675-2hvr
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
4.8 MEDIUM

Reachable only via a malformed reply from the RDMA peer (AC:H, PR:N); impact is a bounded stale-memory over-read (C:L) and gradual Receive-queue drain/DoS (A:L), with no integrity or code-execution primitive.

3.1 AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L
4.0 AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
5.5 HIGH
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
Aug 17, 2026 - 09:38 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
9.8 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.8
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:57 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

xprtrdma: Fix bcall rep leak and unbounded peek

rpcrdma_is_bcall() decodes a reply's first words to decide whether the frame is a backchannel call. Two issues in that decode path let a short or malformed reply leak the receive buffer and drain the Receive queue.

First, the speculative peek

p = xdr_inline_decode(xdr, 0); /* five p++ reads follow */

asks xdr_inline_decode() for zero bytes, which returns xdr->p without consulting xdr->end. The five subsequent __be32 reads can then walk up to 20 bytes past the wire payload into stale regbuf contents and misclassify the reply as a backchannel call.

Second, after the post-peek

p = xdr_inline_decode(xdr, 3 * sizeof(*p)); if (unlikely(!p)) return true;

the short-header arm returns true without calling rpcrdma_bc_receive_call(). The contract with the caller is that a true return transfers ownership of rep to the backchannel path:

rpcrdma_reply_handler() if (rpcrdma_is_bcall(r_xprt, rep)) return; /* bare return, skips out_post */ ... out_post: rpcrdma_post_recvs(r_xprt, credits + ...);

Because rpcrdma_bc_receive_call() never ran, no one took rep, but rpcrdma_reply_handler still bare-returns past rpcrdma_rep_put() and rpcrdma_post_recvs(). The rep, with its persistently DMA-mapped receive buffer, is orphaned on rb_all_reps and freed only at transport teardown. This completion reposts nothing, so its slot is reclaimed only when a later forward-channel reply reaches out_post and rpcrdma_post_recvs() allocates a fresh rep to backfill; absent that traffic the Receive queue drains and the peer's Sends draw RNR NAKs.

Fix by consulting xdr->end after the zero-length peek so the five __be32 reads cannot run unless 20 bytes of wire payload remain. A byte-precise comparison against xdr->end is required because a non-4-aligned receive rounds the stream's word count up past the true payload. Also return false from the short-header arm so the reply falls through the normal out_norqst cleanup chain (rpcrdma_rep_put() plus rpcrdma_post_recvs()).

AnalysisAI

Out-of-bounds read and receive-buffer leak in the Linux kernel's RPC-over-RDMA client transport (xprtrdma) let a malicious or malfunctioning RDMA peer send a short or malformed reply that is misclassified as a backchannel call. The flaw causes the kernel to read up to 20 bytes of stale DMA buffer contents past the wire payload and to orphan a persistently DMA-mapped receive buffer, progressively draining the Receive queue until the peer's Sends draw RNR NAKs. No public exploit is identified at time of analysis and EPSS exploitation probability is low (0.21%); despite the NVD-assigned 9.8 CVSS, the real-world impact is bounded to limited information exposure and connection-level denial of service on systems actually using RPC/RDMA.

Technical ContextAI

The affected code is the Linux kernel SUNRPC RDMA transport (net/sunrpc/xprtrdma), specifically rpcrdma_is_bcall(), which inspects the first XDR words of an incoming reply to decide whether the frame is a NFS/RPC backchannel call. The bug has two parts. A speculative xdr_inline_decode(xdr, 0) requests zero bytes and returns xdr->p without validating against xdr->end, so five subsequent __be32 reads can walk up to 20 bytes beyond the true payload into stale regbuf memory - a classic out-of-bounds read (CWE-125). Separately, the short-header path returned true (signaling ownership transfer to the backchannel handler) without ever calling rpcrdma_bc_receive_call(), so rpcrdma_reply_handler() bare-returns and skips both rpcrdma_rep_put() and rpcrdma_post_recvs(), orphaning the rep and its DMA-mapped buffer on rb_all_reps - a resource/memory leak (CWE-401). CPE data identifies the vendor/product as cpe:2.3:a:linux:linux; the code path only exists where the RPC-over-RDMA transport is compiled and in use.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: upgrade to a fixed stable kernel for your branch - 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.145, 6.12.97, 6.18.40, or 7.1.5 (fixed in mainline 7.2-rc1). Apply the distribution kernel that incorporates the corresponding stable commit (0cee8f9c3b14, 7afc2f8d2fd9, 88b5346284a1, 07aa506436be, d7a2870dde3b, 118a16a18c59, or c7653d5cebc8) via git.kernel.org, tracking whichever series your systems run. If you cannot patch immediately, the concrete compensating control is to avoid the vulnerable transport: do not mount NFS with the rdma transport option (use TCP transport instead), which sidesteps xprtrdma entirely at the cost of losing RDMA performance benefits; alternatively restrict RDMA connectivity so clients only peer with trusted, well-behaved NFS servers on an isolated storage fabric, which limits who can send the malformed reply but does not fix the underlying over-read. Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-72466.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Important
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-2026-72466 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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