NULL pointer dereference in Linux

CVE-2026-31411

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: atm: fix crash due to unvalidated vcc pointer in sigd_send() Reproducer available at [1]. The ATM send path (sendmsg -> vcc_sendmsg -> sigd_send) reads the vcc pointer from msg->vcc and uses it directly without any validation. This pointer comes from userspace via sendmsg() and can be arbitrarily forged: int fd = socket(AF_ATMSVC, SOCK_DGRAM, 0); ioctl(fd, ATMSIGD_CTRL); // become ATM signaling daemon struct msghdr msg = { .msg_iov = &iov, ... }; *(unsigned long *)(buf + 4) = 0xdeadbeef; // fake vcc pointer sendmsg(fd, &msg, 0); // kernel dereferences 0xdeadbeef In normal operation, the kernel sends the vcc pointer to the signaling daemon via sigd_enq() when processing operations like connect(), bind(), or listen(). The daemon is expected to return the same pointer when responding. However, a malicious daemon can send arbitrary pointer values. Fix this by introducing find_get_vcc() which validates the pointer by searching through vcc_hash (similar to how sigd_close() iterates over all VCCs), and acquires a reference via sock_hold() if found. Since struct atm_vcc embeds struct sock as its first member, they share the same lifetime. Therefore using sock_hold/sock_put is sufficient to keep the vcc alive while it is being used. Note that there may be a race with sigd_close() which could mark the vcc with various flags (e.g., ATM_VF_RELEASED) after find_get_vcc() returns. However, sock_hold() guarantees the memory remains valid, so this race only affects the logical state, not memory safety. [1]: https://gist.github.com/mrpre/1ba5949c45529c511152e2f4c755b0f3

EPSS: 0.001 (3.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.