published September 4, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
batman-adv: reject unrepresentable multicast TVLV offsets
The network and transport header fields in struct sk_buff are 16-bit
offsets from skb->head, and U16_MAX is reserved as the unset transport
header value. batadv_tvlv_call_handler() sets both fields from a received
multicast TVLV without checking whether the TVLV end is representable.
If the end offset exceeds the field's range, skb_set_transport_header()
truncates it so that the transport header precedes the network header.
The negative difference is then returned by skb_network_header_len() as
a large u32. batadv_mcast_forw_packet() consequently accepts an oversized
multicast tracker and accesses memory beyond the skb data.
Add skb_set_transport_header_careful(), an offset-aware counterpart to
skb_reset_transport_header_careful(), which validates the final
head-relative offset before assigning it. Use the new helper in
batadv_tvlv_call_handler() and reject unrepresentable TVLVs before
setting the network header.