[PATCH ipsec] xfrm: fix refcount leak in xfrm_migrate_policy_find

From: Kotlyarov Mihail

Date: Sat Apr 04 2026 - 05:06:33 EST


syzkaller reported a memory leak in xfrm_policy_alloc:

BUG: memory leak
unreferenced object 0xffff888114d79000 (size 1024):
comm "syz.1.17", pid 931
...
xfrm_policy_alloc+0xb3/0x4b0 net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c:432

The root cause is a double call to xfrm_pol_hold_rcu() in
xfrm_migrate_policy_find(). The lookup function already returns
a policy with held reference, making the second call redundant.

Remove the redundant xfrm_pol_hold_rcu() call to fix the refcount
imbalance and prevent the memory leak.

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with Syzkaller.

Fixes: 563d5ca93e88 ("xfrm: switch migrate to xfrm_policy_lookup_bytype")
Signed-off-by: Kotlyarov Mihail <mihailkotlyarow@xxxxxxxxx>
---
net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c | 3 ---
1 file changed, 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c b/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
index 62486f866975..8566bc464668 100644
--- a/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
+++ b/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
@@ -4517,9 +4517,6 @@ static struct xfrm_policy *xfrm_migrate_policy_find(const struct xfrm_selector *
pol = xfrm_policy_lookup_bytype(net, type, &fl, sel->family, dir, if_id);
if (IS_ERR_OR_NULL(pol))
goto out_unlock;
-
- if (!xfrm_pol_hold_rcu(pol))
- pol = NULL;
out_unlock:
rcu_read_unlock();
return pol;
--
2.53.0