Patchfirst
CVE-2026-99079 Critical · 9.8 EPSS 0.5%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/mlx5e: Prevent stale XSK buffer release on…

Linux · Linux

Summary

The Linux kernel's mlx5e network driver (net/mlx5e, the legacy cyclic receive queue path used with AF_XDP zero-copy sockets) can release an XSK buffer through a stale pointer during a refill retry, causing the same UMEM frame to be published twice.

Official description · NVD

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/mlx5e: Prevent stale XSK buffer release on refill retry When an XDP redirect to an AF_XDP socket fails because its RX ring is full, the XSK core frees the buffer. During the subsequent batched refill of a legacy cyclic RQ, mlx5e also releases the WQE's XSK buffer before allocating a replacement. If that refill succeeds only partially, a WQE left without a replacement retains its old buffer pointer. The buffer can meanwhile be allocated to another WQE. A later refill retry can then free the live buffer through the stale pointer and publish the same UMEM frame twice. Mark the WQE as released immediately after the driver-side free. The flag is already cleared when a replacement buffer is assigned, so refill retries no longer release stale pointers. The failure is silent and produces no kernel warning or splat. A standalone legacy cyclic-RQ zero-copy libxsk reproducer, using 64-byte UDP traffic offered at 12 Mpps, detected it: stock stopped after 2,854,914 packets in 4.094 seconds, with 4,542 xdp_rx_ring_full events and 64 ownership/double-publication errors. With this change it processed 356,904,225 packets in 30 seconds despite 571,405 xdp_rx_ring_full events, with no ownership or data errors.

Breakdown
16.7 / 100
Exploited
Not confirmed
Reports
0
Tactics
0/15

Disclosed on 23 Oct 2026. No public exploit code or confirmed exploitation is recorded.

techniques

No techniques linked

No ATT&CK techniques are linked to this CVE yet. MITRE CTID has not mapped it, and no report passage in the corpus ties it to a technique.

What security researchers reported

Not named in any threat report yet

Also mentioned in 6 community threat pulses (AlienVault OTX)

Weaker evidence

Pulses are indicator collections that anyone can publish. A mention is not confirmation of exploitation.

References

5 links, grouped by NVD tag
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