Accidental Leak of Linux Kernel Vulnerability Reports to Public Mailing

Security researchers from the Zero Day Initiative accidentally published reports on Linux kernel vulnerabilities in the open LKML mailing list, instead of sending them to a private channel for specialists.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the leading kernel developers, requested clarification regarding this mistake. Most critical vulnerabilities in the main kernel branch remain unfixed, and patches are in the testing phase or in experimental branches.

The information leak created risks for users, as attackers received a detailed map of potential attacks before official fixes were released.

The list of identified issues includes:

• SMB Direct: remote code execution due to integer overflow (CVSS 9.0).
• KSMBD: race condition allowing remote code execution (CVSS 9.0).
• skb_zerocopy and VMware VMWGFX driver: local privilege escalation.
• NVMET: information disclosure due to uninitialized resources.

A patch for SMB Direct is already available in the future kernel 7.5 branch, and information about the skb_zerocopy vulnerability was obtained by developers externally even a week earlier.

In the first six months of 2026, 2308 vulnerabilities with assigned CVEs were identified in the Linux kernel, which is a record among software vendors. The use of neural networks for bug hunting continues to accelerate this process.