High · published August 22, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: sch_cake: drop WARN_ON(1) for malformed packets in ACK filter
The sch_cake ACK filter parses packets to find the TCP header and filter
duplicated ACKs if the flow is backlogged. The parsing code contains a
WARN_ON(1) which can be triggered by a malformed IP header in certain
cases. Depending on the system configuration, this leads either to
either spamming dmesg with warnings, or a panic if panic_on_warn is set.
The code already correctly skips the offending packet in the branch that
triggers the warning, so the WARN_ON itself doesn't really serve any
purpose. So just drop it altogether to avoid the inconvenient side
effects.