net: openvswitch: fix possible kfree_skb of ERR_PTR
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: fix possible kfree_skb of ERR_PTR After the patch in the "Fixes" tag, the allocation of the "reply" skb can happen either before or after locking the ovs_mutex. However, error cleanups still follow the classical reversed order, assuming "reply" is allocated before locking: it is freed after unlocking. If "reply" allocation happens after locking the mutex and it fails, "reply" is left with an ERR_PTR, and execution jumps to the correspondent cleanup stage which will try to free an invalid pointer. Fix this by setting the pointer to NULL after having saved its error value.
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: fix possible kfree_skb of ERR_PTR After the patch in the "Fixes" tag, the allocation of the "reply" skb can happen either before or after locking the ovs_mutex. However, error cleanups still follow the classical reversed order, assuming "reply" is allocated before locking: it is freed after unlocking. If "reply" allocation happens after locking the mutex and it fails, "reply" is left with an ERR_PTR, and execution jumps to the correspondent cleanup stage which will try to free an invalid pointer. Fix this by setting the pointer to NULL after having saved its error value.
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0bb5b2dc1b90aa7dd1473fc8c4d813a29255ff8d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/25fdf53698535fe8790237f5a8a9626791429785
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/895d1dd9057cde1687fa0f4286d47ceed0b82997
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/971b1b37774f13acc5add0a2843f8598446b8598
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e248fb2e680deb2bd37bac551b72638fe4938a76
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e3d509a1b71396e1452060dbf84a805fd1c3c549
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ecc55aad3390129a87106841f4b68bf3d70c9264
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee30dd2909d8b98619f4341c70ec8dc8e155ab02
- https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/53xxx/CVE-2026-53227.json
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-53227