Use-After-Free Vulnerability in Linux Kernel Affects Various Distributions

CVE-2026-45837

What is CVE-2026-45837?

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel involves a use-after-free condition within the bpf subsystem during the fork process. When a new process is created, the child process inherits a pointer to the virtual memory area (VMA) of the parent. If the parent process unmaps this VMA, the child process ends up referencing a stale pointer, leading to potential exploitation when attempting to free pages. The fix addresses this by ensuring that the virtual memory area is not inherited across forks with appropriate flags to prevent unwanted operations during memory remapping.

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