Local privilege escalation via VXLAN socket race
Published Sep 18, 2025 · Updated Sep 18, 2025
Use-after-free in the Linux kernel VXLAN path allows local users to escalate privileges by racing tunnel teardown with packet receipt. The teardown path releases a UDP tunnel socket before RCU sk_user_data readers finish, letting vxlan_ecn_decapsulate use a freed vxlan_sock. Creating and deleting the tunnel requires CAP_NET_ADMIN in a network namespace; a successful race can expose or modify kernel memory or crash the host.
Summary
What happened
Use-after-free in the Linux kernel VXLAN path allows local users to escalate privileges by racing tunnel teardown with packet receipt. The teardown path releases a UDP tunnel socket before RCU sk_user_data readers finish, letting vxlan_ecn_decapsulate use a freed vxlan_sock. Creating and deleting the tunnel requires CAP_NET_ADMIN in a network namespace; a successful race can expose or modify kernel memory or crash the host.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-50405
- Published
- Sep 18, 2025
- Updated
- Sep 18, 2025
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux
- Classifications
- T1068
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 18, 2025CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 18, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=3.18
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <303000c793f705d07b551eb7c1c27001c5b33c8d
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <3cf7203ca620682165706f70a1b12b5194607dce
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <588d0b8462f5ffed3e677e65639825b2678117ab
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <84e566d157cc22ad2da8bdd970495855fbf13d92
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <91f09a776ae335ca836ed864b8f2a9461882a280
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <9a6544343bba7da929d6d4a2dc44ec0f15970081
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <b38aa7465411795e9e744b8d94633910497fec2a
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <be34e79e0ae6adbf6e7e75ddaee9ad84795ab933
- Affected versionversion=6a93cc9052748c6355ec9d5b6c38b77f85f1cb0d <e8316584b0a6c61c9c407631040c22712b26e38c
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- VXLAN removal during traffic reproducerproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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