Crypto request interruption via uninitialized inflight flag
Published Jan 14, 2026 · Updated Jan 14, 2026
Use of uninitialized memory in the Linux Kernel AF_ALG interface allows local users to interrupt asynchronous crypto requests. AF_ALG contexts allocated by sock_kmalloc() are not cleared, so af_alg_alloc_areq() reads a garbage ctx->inflight flag as true and returns -EBUSY. Low-privilege local access to the crypto user API is required, and the demonstrated consequence is random request rejection rather than a kernel crash.
Summary
What happened
Use of uninitialized memory in the Linux Kernel AF_ALG interface allows local users to interrupt asynchronous crypto requests. AF_ALG contexts allocated by sock_kmalloc() are not cleared, so af_alg_alloc_areq() reads a garbage ctx->inflight flag as true and returns -EBUSY. Low-privilege local access to the crypto user API is required, and the demonstrated consequence is random request rejection rather than a kernel crash.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-71113
- Published
- Jan 14, 2026
- Updated
- Jan 14, 2026
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux Kernel
- Classifications
- CWE-908, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jan 14, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 14, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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- Affected versionversion=2.6.38
- Affected versionversion=fe869cdb89c95d060c77eea20204d6c91f233b53 <51a5ab36084f3251ef87eda3e6a6236f6488925e
- Affected versionversion=fe869cdb89c95d060c77eea20204d6c91f233b53 <5a4b65523608974a81edbe386f8a667a3e10c726
- Affected versionversion=fe869cdb89c95d060c77eea20204d6c91f233b53 <6f6e309328d53a10c0fe1f77dec2db73373179b6
- Affected versionversion=fe869cdb89c95d060c77eea20204d6c91f233b53 <84238876e3b3b262cf62d5f4d1338e983fb27010
- Affected versionversion=fe869cdb89c95d060c77eea20204d6c91f233b53 <f81244fd6b14fecfa93b66b6bb1d59f96554e550
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Attacks
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