Vulnerabilities
- CVSS
- 7.5 High
- Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H- EPSS
- 0.49%
- Risk score
- 30.1
- Published
- 2026-08-22
- Status
- Published
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: act_ct: fix sk_buff leak when the header checks reject a packet
tcf_ct_handle_fragments() runs its header sanity checks before handing
anything to the defragmentation engine:
if (family == NFPROTO_IPV4)
err = tcf_ct_ipv4_is_fragment(skb, &frag);
else
err = tcf_ct_ipv6_is_fragment(skb, &frag);
if (err || !frag)
return err;
tcf_ct_ipv4_is_fragment() returns -EINVAL or -ENOMEM;
tcf_ct_ipv6_is_fragment() adds -EPROTO when ipv6_find_hdr() fails. None of
them frees or queues the skb, so on that path the caller still owns it.
tcf_ct_act() however funnels every non-zero return into the
ownership-transfer exit:
err = tcf_ct_handle_fragments(net, skb, family, p->zone, &defrag);
if (err)
goto out_frag;
...
out_frag:
if (err != -EINPROGRESS)
tcf_action_inc_drop_qstats(&c->common);
return TC_ACT_CONSUMED;
TC_ACT_CONSUMED means the action took ownership of the skb, so no caller
frees it - sch_handle_ingress(), sch_handle_egress() and
tcf_qevent_handle() all deliberately skip the free for that verdict. The
skb is therefore orphaned: one sk_buff plus its data buffer is leaked per
malformed packet, unbounded. Note the drop counter is already incremented
for these errors, so the statistics claim a drop that never happens.
Three different ownership states reach out_frag: today - the skb may be
queued by the defrag engine (-EINPROGRESS), already freed by
nf_ct_handle_fragments(), or still owned by us. Tell the caller which of
those it is, and free the packet ourselves in the last case, which
restores the TC_ACT_SHOT behaviour that predated the Fixes: commit.
Reproduced on v7.2-rc6 with a 54-byte frame carrying a 40-byte IPv6
header with nexthdr = 0 (hop-by-hop) and nothing after it, on a
clsact ingress chain with "action ct". kmemleak reports one leaked
232-byte skbuff_head_cache object plus its 704-byte data buffer per
packet; with this patch it reports none.
Coverage 1
threat-intel
Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel of Debian. These vulnerabilities allow for privilege escalation, data compromise, and denial of service. The affected Debian versions are prior to 6.12.10…
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