How severe is CVE-2026-63809?

CVE-2026-63809 has a CVSS score of 7.8/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2026-63809?

CVE-2026-63809 affects the following packages: Kernel (Linux). Ecosystems affected: Linux.

How do I fix CVE-2026-63809?

Update Kernel to 5.10.260 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-63809 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2026-63809 in my Linux dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Kernel. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.

How do I mitigate CVE-2026-63809 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

How does O3 Security protect against CVE-2026-63809?

O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-63809 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is CVE-2026-63809 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2026-63809 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

When was CVE-2026-63809 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2026-63809 was published on July 19, 2026 and was last updated on July 22, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

🐧 Linux

CVE-2026-63809

HIGH

bpf: use kvfree() for replaced sysctl write buffer

Published

Jul 19, 2026

Updated

Jul 22, 2026

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

🐧Kernel

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Linux packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

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

bpf: use kvfree() for replaced sysctl write buffer

proc_sys_call_handler() allocates its temporary sysctl buffer with kvzalloc() and passes it to __cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl(). Since kvzalloc() may fall back to vmalloc() for large allocations, freeing that buffer with kfree() is wrong and can corrupt memory.

Use kvfree() to safely handle both kmalloc and kvzalloc()/vmalloc allocations.

The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing v6.13-rc1. The tool is still under development and is not yet publicly available. Manual inspection confirms that the bug is still present in v7.1-rc5.

Reproduced the bug based on v7.1-rc4 in a QEMU x86_64 guest booted with KASAN and CONFIG_FAILSLAB enabled. To exercise the replacement path, the test tree also included the accompanying fix for the stale ret == 1 check in __cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl(). The reproducer confines failslab injections to the proc_sys_call_handler() range, uses stacktrace-depth=32, and injects fail-nth=1 while writing 8191 bytes to /proc/sys/kernel/domainname from a task in the target cgroup. Under that setup, fail-nth=1 triggered the fault:

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffeb0200024d48 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 209 Comm: repro_proc_sys_ Not tainted 7.1.0-rc4-00686-g97625979a5d4 PREEMPT(lazy) Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.15.0-1 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:kfree+0x6e/0x510 ... Call Trace: <TASK> ? __cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl+0x626/0xc30 __cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl+0x74d/0xc30 ? __pfx___cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl+0x10/0x10 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f ? __kvmalloc_node_noprof+0x345/0x870 ? proc_sys_call_handler+0x250/0x480 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f proc_sys_call_handler+0x3a2/0x480 ? __pfx_proc_sys_call_handler+0x10/0x10 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f ? selinux_file_permission+0x39f/0x500 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f ? lock_is_held_type+0x9e/0x120 vfs_write+0x98e/0x1000 ... </TASK>

With this fix applied on top of the same test setup, rerunning the reproducer with fail-nth=1 yields no corresponding Oops reports.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🐧Linux	`Kernel`	≥ 5.11.0&&< 5.10.260	5.10.260

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Kernel. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update Kernel to 5.10.260 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-63809 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-63809 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Tailored to CVE-2026-63809. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: use kvfree() for replaced sysctl write buffer proc_sys_call_handler() allocates its temporary sysctl buffer with kvzalloc() and passes it to __cgroup_bpf_run_filter_sysctl(). Since kvzalloc() may fall back to vmalloc() for large allocations, freeing that buffer with kfree() is wrong and can corrupt memory. Use kvfree() to safely handle both kmalloc and kvzalloc()/vmalloc allocations. The bug was first flagged by an experimental analysis tool we are developing for kernel memory-management bugs while analyzing v6.13-rc1

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2026-63809 in your dependencies?

O3 detects CVE-2026-63809 across Linux dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

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