CVE-2026-53181

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

Description A memory leak occurs in the vsock/vmci component during a failed handshake. When the function vmci transport recv connecting server() returns an error, the vmci transport recv listen() function calls vsock remove pending() but fails to call sk acceptq removed(). This results in the sk ack backlog variable being permanently incremented. Repeated handshake failures caused by malformed packets, queue pair allocation failures, or event subscribe failures cause sk ack backlog to reach the sk max ack backlog limit. Once this limit is hit, the listener refuses all new connections with a -ECONNREFUSED error, leading to a silent denial of service that requires a process restart to resolve.

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