CVE-2026-74580 exposes Linux kernels 4.11 through 7.2-rc4 to local privilege escalation through the vhost subsystem.
Researchers published technical details and working demos covering memory manipulation and KASLR bypass.
The issue was found in a section of code that accelerates networking and other functions for virtual machines and isolated environments. The issue had been in the code for about nine years, gradually building up through changes made in 2017 and 2020.
Who is affected and what can happen?
The issue affects Linux versions from version 4.11 to the latest, spanning a period of nearly ten years. Security researchers from Tencent Zhuque Lab were able to successfully replicate it on popular operating systems, including Ubuntu, RHEL, Amazon Linux, Azure Linux, and Oracle Linux.
At the local level, a user could read and write to the system's main memory and elevate their privileges to administrator. In virtualization environments, there was also the risk that an untrusted virtual machine could write data outside of the allowed limits to the host computer's memory, taking control or causing the program managing the virtual machines to terminate.
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Correcting the problem
The Tencent team, which discovered the issue with the help of a specialized artificial intelligence system, published a technical analysis and fix on October 12. Major software companies and management authorities have already begun incorporating the relevant fixes into their own releases.
Until the update is installed on systems, experts recommend restricting access to files related to this feature, allowing it only to trusted virtualization services. There is no evidence so far that the issue has been used in real attacks.
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