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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2026-72451 in the critical feed json

xfrm: Fix xfrm state cache insertion race

published 2mo ago modified 2mo ago also EUVD-2026-59350

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 52%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

xfrm: Fix xfrm state cache insertion race

The xfrm input state cache insertion code checks the validity of the state before acquiring the global xfrm_state_lock. Thus it's possible for someone else to kill the state after it passed the validity check, and then the insertion will add the dead state to the cache.

Fix this by moving the validity check inside the lock.

This entire function is called on the input path, where BH must be off (e.g., the caller of this function xfrm_input acquires its spinlocks without disabling BH).

So there is no need to disable BH here or take the RCU read lock. Remove both and replace them with an assertion that trips if BH is accidentally enabled on some future calling path.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.97, 6.18.40, 7.1.5, 7.2
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.100-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.1.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72451

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-147.147
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-34.34
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1067.70
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1013.13
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1071.79
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1013.13
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1066.74
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1007.8

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72451

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2026-72451 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-72451 updated cvss 5.9

kernel: xfrm: Fix xfrm state cache insertion race

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.67% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 52% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.