CVE-2026-45990

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: slub: fix data loss and overflow in krealloc() Commit 2cd8231796b5 ("mm/slub: allow to set node and align in k[v]realloc") introduced the ability to force a reallocation if the original object does not satisfy new alignment or NUMA node, even when the object is being shrunk. This introduced two bugs in the reallocation fallback path: 1. Data loss during NUMA migration: The jump to 'alloc_new' happens before 'ks' and 'orig_size' are initialized. As a result, the memcpy() in the 'alloc_new' block would copy 0 bytes into the new allocation. 2. Buffer overflow during shrinking: When shrinking an object while forcing a new alignment, 'new_size' is smaller than the old size. However, the memcpy() used the old size ('orig_size ?: ks'), leading to an out-of-bounds write. The same overflow bug exists in the kvrealloc() fallback path, where the old bucket size ksize(p) is copied into the new buffer without being bounded by the new size. A simple reproducer: // e.g. add to lkdtm as KREALLOC_SHRINK_OVERFLOW while (1) { void *p = kmalloc(128, GFP_KERNEL); p = krealloc_node_align(p, 64, 256, GFP_KERNEL, NUMA_NO_NODE); kfree(p); } demonstrates the issue: ================================================================== BUG: KFENCE: out-of-bounds write in memcpy_orig+0x68/0x130 Out-of-bounds write at 0xffff8883ad757038 (120B right of kfence-#47): memcpy_orig+0x68/0x130 krealloc_node_align_noprof+0x1c8/0x340 lkdtm_KREALLOC_SHRINK_OVERFLOW+0x8c/0xc0 [lkdtm] lkdtm_do_action+0x3a/0x60 [lkdtm] ... kfence-#47: 0xffff8883ad756fc0-0xffff8883ad756fff, size=64, cache=kmalloc-64 allocated by task 316 on cpu 7 at 97.680481s (0.021813s ago): krealloc_node_align_noprof+0x19c/0x340 lkdtm_KREALLOC_SHRINK_OVERFLOW+0x8c/0xc0 [lkdtm] lkdtm_do_action+0x3a/0x60 [lkdtm] ... ================================================================== Fix it by moving the old size calculation to the top of __do_krealloc() and bounding all copy lengths by the new allocation size.

Package Linux Kernel
Published 2026-05-27
Last modified 2026-05-27
Patch available
Yes

Affected versions

Linux kernel versions 6.18 and later are affected. Fixed in 6.18.27, 7.0.4, 7.1-rc1 and their respective stable series.

Affected from
≥ 6.18
Fixed in
✓ 6.18.27 6.18.x ✓ 7.0.4 7.0.x ✓ 7.1-rc1

References

The following references provide additional information about CVE-2026-45990 including vendor advisories, patch commits, exploit details, and third-party analysis. Links are sourced from the NIST NVD database.

Frequently asked questions

  • What is CVE-2026-45990?

    CVE-2026-45990 is a unscored severity Linux kernel vulnerability . It affects Linux kernel versions from 6.18 onward and has been patched in 6.18.27, 7.0.4 and 7.1-rc1. CVE-2026-45990 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

  • Is there a patch available for CVE-2026-45990?

    Yes — CVE-2026-45990 has been patched. Fixed versions include 6.18.27, 7.0.4 and 7.1-rc1. If you are running Linux kernel 6.18 or later up to the fix versions, apply the relevant patch for your kernel branch.

  • Is CVE-2026-45990 actively exploited?

    No — CVE-2026-45990 has not been confirmed as actively exploited. It is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.