Local privilege escalation via enic teardown race
Published Aug 22, 2026 · Updated Aug 25, 2026
Use-after-free in the enic driver in Linux allows local users to crash the kernel or escalate privileges during device removal. enic_remove() leaves tx_hang_reset schedulable while freeing the network device, so a TX timeout can queue enic_tx_hang_reset() after free_netdev(). The race requires concurrent device teardown and a watchdog TX timeout; the dangling work item can panic the kernel or access reallocated kernel memory.
Summary
What happened
Use-after-free in the enic driver in Linux allows local users to crash the kernel or escalate privileges during device removal. enic_remove() leaves tx_hang_reset schedulable while freeing the network device, so a TX timeout can queue enic_tx_hang_reset() after free_netdev(). The race requires concurrent device teardown and a watchdog TX timeout; the dangling work item can panic the kernel or access reallocated kernel memory.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-74725
- Published
- Aug 22, 2026
- Updated
- Aug 25, 2026
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux
- Classifications
- CWE-364, T1068
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Aug 22, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Aug 25, 2026Record 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=4.4
- Affected versionversion=937317c7c1097aa878a5000e3aab616eb5c590c0 <4f3464fc6c1f26afc504fd525c574f2bc14c9d42
- Affected versionversion=937317c7c1097aa878a5000e3aab616eb5c590c0 <8619865f34fb3b130b567855382a5c4aadd522b9
- Affected versionversion=937317c7c1097aa878a5000e3aab616eb5c590c0 <e506e704b74748ffd0e1c92a7453ca2a959f832b
- Affected versionversion=937317c7c1097aa878a5000e3aab616eb5c590c0 <ec680ea4ba1bca92a767fb7e7869758bfdd886e3
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
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
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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