How severe is CVE-2026-64459?

CVE-2026-64459 has a CVSS score of 9.8/10, rated CRITICAL. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2026-64459?

CVE-2026-64459 affects the following packages: Kernel (Linux). Ecosystems affected: Linux.

How do I fix CVE-2026-64459?

Update Kernel to 6.18.39 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-64459 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2026-64459 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-2026-64459 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-2026-64459?

O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-64459 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-2026-64459 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2026-64459 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-2026-64459 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2026-64459 was published on July 25, 2026 and was last updated on July 28, 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-2026-64459

CRITICAL

CVE-2026-64459 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) vulnerability in Kernel. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-64459 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.

tcp: restore RCU grace period in tcp_ao_destroy_sock

Published

Jul 25, 2026

Updated

Jul 28, 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:

tcp: restore RCU grace period in tcp_ao_destroy_sock

Commit 51e547e8c89c ("tcp: Free TCP-AO/TCP-MD5 info/keys without RCU") removed the call_rcu() callback from tcp_ao_destroy_sock(), arguing that "the destruction of info/keys is delayed until the socket destructor" and therefore "no one can discover it anymore".

That argument does not hold for the call site in tcp_connect() (net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:4327-4332). At that point the socket is in TCP_SYN_SENT, has already been inserted into the inet ehash by inet_hash_connect() in tcp_v4_connect(), and is therefore very much discoverable: any softirq running tcp_v4_rcv() on another CPU can take the socket out of the ehash, walk into tcp_inbound_hash(), and load tp->ao_info via implicit RCU before bh_lock_sock_nested() is taken on the destroying CPU.

The reader path then enters __tcp_ao_do_lookup() (net/ipv4/tcp_ao.c:208) which re-loads tp->ao_info via rcu_dereference_check(); the re-load can still observe the (about-to-be-freed) pointer because there is no synchronize_rcu() between rcu_assign_pointer(tp->ao_info, NULL) and tcp_ao_info_free() in tcp_ao_destroy_sock(). The captured pointer is then walked at line 223:

hlist_for_each_entry_rcu(key, &ao->head, node, ...)

The writer's synchronous kfree() is free to complete between the line 218 re-fetch and the line 223 hlist iteration. The slab is reused (or simply LIST_POISON1-stamped if not yet reused) and the iteration walks attacker-controlled or poison memory in softirq context.

Reproducer (no debug shim, stock x86_64 v7.1-rc2 SMP+KASAN, QEMU+KVM): an unprivileged uid=1000 process inside CLONE_NEWUSER|CLONE_NEWNET installs TCP_MD5SIG + TCP_AO_ADD_KEY on a TCP socket, sprays forged TCP-AO segments toward its eventual 4-tuple via raw sockets, then calls connect(). The md5-wins reconciliation in tcp_connect() fires tcp_ao_destroy_sock(); the softirq backlog reader on the loopback NAPI path crashes on the freed ao->head.first walk:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xfbd59c000000002f KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead000000000178-0xdead00000000017f] CPU: 0 UID: 1000 PID: 100 Comm: repro_userns RIP: 0010:__tcp_ao_do_lookup+0x107/0x1c0 Call Trace: <IRQ> __tcp_ao_do_lookup+0x107/0x1c0 tcp_ao_inbound_lookup.constprop.0+0x12a/0x200 tcp_inbound_ao_hash+0x5ea/0x1520 tcp_inbound_hash+0x7ce/0x1240 tcp_v4_rcv+0x1e7a/0x3e10 ...

Restore the RCU grace period: re-add struct rcu_head to tcp_ao_info and replace the synchronous tcp_ao_info_free() with a call_rcu() callback. Readers that captured tp->ao_info before rcu_assign_pointer NULLed it now see the object remain valid until rcu_read_unlock(). With the patch applied the reproducer runs cleanly for 2000 iterations on the same kernel build.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🐧Linux	`Kernel`	≥ 6.18.0&&< 6.18.39	6.18.39

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 6.18.39 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-64459 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-2026-64459 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-2026-64459. 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: tcp: restore RCU grace period in tcp_ao_destroy_sock Commit 51e547e8c89c ("tcp: Free TCP-AO/TCP-MD5 info/keys without RCU") removed the call_rcu() callback from tcp_ao_destroy_sock(), arguing that "the destruction of info/keys is delayed until the socket destructor" and therefore "no one can discover it anymore". That argument does not hold for the call site in tcp_connect() (net/ipv4/tcp_output.c:4327-4332). At that point the socket is in TCP_SYN_SENT, has already been inserted into the inet ehash by inet_hash_connect() in

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2026-64459 in your dependencies?

O3 detects CVE-2026-64459 across Linux dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works