Public PoC Released for Linux AF_UNIX Container-Escape Flaw

A high-severity Linux kernel use-after-free vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-53361 (CVSS 7.1), affects the AF_UNIX socket garbage collector and can allow an unprivileged local attacker to corrupt kernel memory and escape a container. The flaw is a race condition in which concurrent MSG_PEEK operations retain a reference to an in-flight file descriptor that the garbage collector fails to account for, potentially leaving a dangling sk_buff after a live socket is freed.

Technical details and public proof-of-concept exploit code, including work described as BAD_GARBAGE.c, have been released. No confirmed in-the-wild exploitation has been reported, but organizations running shared, multi-tenant, or containerized Linux environments should apply upstream or stable backport fixes—available in stable kernel version 6.12.95 and later—then reboot affected hosts; access by untrusted local users should be restricted until patching is complete.