The vulnerability is a memory leak caused by missing cleanup of the smbd_connection object when cifs_get_tcp_session() fails. The error path frees the TCP session structure without first calling smbd_destroy(), leaving an allocated smbd_connection. This missing release is a CWE‑772 flaw that can accumulate over repeated failures, exhausting kernel memory and potentially causing denial of service.

All Linux kernel builds that contain the SMB/CIFS client code prior to the patch commit 3164402c58940ff58a3cecdb026405f07b0253af are affected. The flaw resides solely in kernel space and does not impact user‑space applications. Systems using a kernel that has not yet incorporated the commit will be vulnerable.

The EPSS score is less than 1%, indicating a very low likelihood of exploitation under current conditions. The CVSS score of 5.5 denotes moderate severity. The flaw is not included in the CISA KEV catalog. Exploitation would require an SMB client from a remote host to initiate an RDMA connection that succeeds but then triggers a failure in cifs_get_tcp_session(), such as a kthread_create() error, thereby repeatedly invoking the faulty cleanup path. If an attacker can repeatedly induce failures, the resulting memory leak could lead to a denial‑of‑service attack.