High · published July 19, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ieee802154: 6lowpan: only accept IPv6 packets in lowpan_xmit()
The aoe driver (or similar) generates a non-IPv6 packet
(e.g., ETH_P_AOE) and queues it for transmission via dev_queue_xmit()
on a 6LoWPAN interface (configured by the user or test case).
Since the packet is not IPv6, the 6LoWPAN header_ops->create function
(lowpan_header_create or header_create) returns early without initializing
the lowpan_addr_info structure in the skb headroom.
In the transmit function (lowpan_xmit), the driver calls lowpan_header
(or setup_header) which unconditionally copies and uses the lowpan_addr_info
from the headroom, which contains uninitialized data.
Fix this by dropping non IPv6 packets.
A similar fix is needed in net/bluetooth/6lowpan.c bt_xmit().