CVE-2026-23074

HIGH

Linux kernel - Privilege Escalation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: Enforce that teql can only be used as root qdisc Design intent of teql is that it is only supposed to be used as root qdisc. We need to check for that constraint. Although not important, I will describe the scenario that unearthed this issue for the curious. GangMin Kim <[email protected]> managed to concot a scenario as follows: ROOT qdisc 1:0 (QFQ) ├── class 1:1 (weight=15, lmax=16384) netem with delay 6.4s └── class 1:2 (weight=1, lmax=1514) teql GangMin sends a packet which is enqueued to 1:1 (netem). Any invocation of dequeue by QFQ from this class will not return a packet until after 6.4s. In the meantime, a second packet is sent and it lands on 1:2. teql's enqueue will return success and this will activate class 1:2. Main issue is that teql only updates the parent visible qlen (sch->q.qlen) at dequeue. Since QFQ will only call dequeue if peek succeeds (and teql's peek always returns NULL), dequeue will never be called and thus the qlen will remain as 0. With that in mind, when GangMin updates 1:2's lmax value, the qfq_change_class calls qfq_deact_rm_from_agg. Since the child qdisc's qlen was not incremented, qfq fails to deactivate the class, but still frees its pointers from the aggregate. So when the first packet is rescheduled after 6.4 seconds (netem's delay), a dangling pointer is accessed causing GangMin's causing a UAF.

Scores

CVSS v3 7.8
EPSS 0.0002
EPSS Percentile 4.3%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-416
Status published
Products (25)
linux/Kernel 2.6.12 - 5.10.249linux
linux/Kernel 5.11.0 - 5.15.199linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.0 - 6.1.162linux
linux/Kernel 6.13.0 - 6.18.8linux
linux/Kernel 6.2.0 - 6.6.122linux
linux/Kernel 6.7.0 - 6.12.68linux
Linux/Linux < 2.6.12
Linux/Linux 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 - 0686bedfed34155520f3f735cbf3210cb9044380
Linux/Linux 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 - 16ed73c1282d376b956bff23e5139add061767ba
Linux/Linux 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 - 4c7e8aa71c9232cba84c289b4b56cba80b280841
... and 15 more
Published Feb 04, 2026
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026