CVE-2025-71113

CVE Details

Release Date:	2026-01-14
Impact:	Moderate	What is this?

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: af_alg - zero initialize memory allocated via sock_kmalloc Several crypto user API contexts and requests allocated with sock_kmalloc() were left uninitialized, relying on callers to set fields explicitly. This resulted in the use of uninitialized data in certain error paths or when new fields are added in the future. The ACVP patches also contain two user-space interface files: algif_kpp.c and algif_akcipher.c. These too rely on proper initialization of their context structures. A particular issue has been observed with the newly added 'inflight' variable introduced in af_alg_ctx by commit: 67b164a871af ("crypto: af_alg - Disallow multiple in-flight AIO requests") Because the context is not memset to zero after allocation, the inflight variable has contained garbage values. As a result, af_alg_alloc_areq() has incorrectly returned -EBUSY randomly when the garbage value was interpreted as true: https://github.com/gregkh/linux/blame/master/crypto/af_alg.c#L1209 The check directly tests ctx->inflight without explicitly comparing against true/false. Since inflight is only ever set to true or false later, an uninitialized value has triggered -EBUSY failures. Zero-initializing memory allocated with sock_kmalloc() ensures inflight and other fields start in a known state, removing random issues caused by uninitialized data.

See more information about CVE-2025-71113 from MITRE CVE dictionary and NIST NVD

NOTE: The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 metrics

Base Score:	5.5
Vector String:	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Version:	3.1
Attack Vector:	Local
Attack Complexity:	Low
Privileges Required:	Low
User Interaction:	None
Scope:	Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact:	None
Integrity Impact:	None
Availability Impact:	High

Errata information

Platform	Errata	Release Date
Oracle Linux version 10 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2026-50112	2026-02-20
Oracle Linux version 9 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2026-50112	2026-02-20