Use After Free in Linux

CVE-2026-52982

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: usb: rtl8150: fix use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit() syzbot reported a KASAN slab-use-after-free read in rtl8150_start_xmit() when accessing skb->len for tx statistics after usb_submit_urb() has been called: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rtl8150_start_xmit+0x71f/0x760 drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.c:712 Read of size 4 at addr ffff88810eb7a930 by task kworker/0:4/5226 The URB completion handler write_bulk_callback() frees the skb via dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb). The URB may complete on another CPU in softirq context before usb_submit_urb() returns in the submitter, so by the time the submitter reads skb->len the skb has already been queued to the per-CPU completion_queue and freed by net_tx_action(): CPU A (xmit) CPU B (USB completion softirq) ------------ ------------------------------ dev->tx_skb = skb; usb_submit_urb() --+ |-------> write_bulk_callback() | dev_kfree_skb_irq(dev->tx_skb) | net_tx_action() | napi_skb_cache_put() <-- free netdev->stats.tx_bytes | += skb->len; <-- UAF read Fix it by caching skb->len before submitting the URB and using the cached value when updating the tx_bytes counter. The pre-existing tx_bytes semantics are preserved: the counter tracks the original frame length (skb->len), not the ETH_ZLEN/USB-alignment padded "count" value that is handed to the device. Changing that would be a user-visible accounting change and is out of scope for this UAF fix.

Vulnerability class: Use-After-Free

Published 2026-06-24 · last modified 2026-07-14.