Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-31610

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ksmbd: fix mechToken leak when SPNEGO decode fails after token alloc The kernel ASN.1 BER decoder calls action callbacks incrementally as it walks the input. When ksmbd_decode_negTokenInit() reaches the mechToken [2] OCTET STRING element, ksmbd_neg_token_alloc() allocates conn->mechToken immediately via kmemdup_nul(). If a later element in the same blob is malformed, then the decoder will return nonzero after the allocation is already live. This could happen if mechListMIC [3] overrunse the enclosing SEQUENCE. decode_negotiation_token() then sets conn->use_spnego = false because both the negTokenInit and negTokenTarg grammars failed. The cleanup at the bottom of smb2_sess_setup() is gated on use_spnego: if (conn->use_spnego && conn->mechToken) { kfree(conn->mechToken); conn->mechToken = NULL; } so the kfree is skipped, causing the mechToken to never be freed. This codepath is reachable pre-authentication, so untrusted clients can cause slow memory leaks on a server without even being properly authenticated. Fix this up by not checking check for use_spnego, as it's not required, so the memory will always be properly freed. At the same time, always free the memory in ksmbd_conn_free() incase some other failure path forgot to free it.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (7.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 7th percentile — 7.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-31610: held from 0.001 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-31610?
CVE-2026-31610 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux, classified under Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2026-04-24.
How severe is CVE-2026-31610?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.