CVE-2026-22979

Name of the Vulnerable Software and Affected Versions Linux kernel (affected versions not specified)

Description A memory leak exists in the Linux kernel's networking subsystem within the skb segment list() function when handling packets aggregated by the GRO (Generic Receive Offload) engine. Prior to a specific commit, the code correctly transferred memory accounting between parent SKBs and their segments. A later commit altered the behavior to orphan fraglist entries, but the corresponding accounting logic in skb segment list() was not updated. This resulted in an under-count of memory when the head SKB was freed, preventing socket destruction and causing a persistent memory leak. The issue is specifically related to SKB GSO FRAGLIST packets constructed by GRO. The leak can be observed using KMEMLEAK during network environment teardown, as indicated by unreferenced objects and a specific backtrace involving functions like kmem cache alloc noprof and sk prot alloc.

Recommendations At the moment, there is no information about a newer version that contains a fix for this vulnerability.