published October 18, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ipv6: do not let ipv6_find_hdr() return an offset past the packet end
ipv6_find_hdr() walks the extension header chain, skipping each header by
the length that header itself declares. ipv6_optlen() returns up to 2048,
and the skip is never checked against skb->len, so the offset stored in
*offset can point past the end of the packet.
openvswitch installs that offset as the transport header, and
update_ipv6_checksum() then reads and writes the transport checksum field
out of bounds:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in inet_proto_csum_replace16+0x445/0x470
Read of size 2 at addr ffff88810b754b06 by task ovs_ipv6_oob/629
CPU: 4 UID: 1000 PID: 629 Comm: ovs_ipv6_oob Tainted: G N 7.3.0-rc3+ #348
Call Trace:
inet_proto_csum_replace16+0x445/0x470
set_ipv6_addr+0x3dd/0x460
do_execute_actions+0x6a3d/0x7c40
ovs_execute_actions+0xfd/0x480
ovs_packet_cmd_execute+0xc38/0xf20
genl_rcv_msg+0x59e/0x870
netlink_rcv_skb+0x18b/0x450
genl_rcv+0x2d/0x40
netlink_unicast+0x6bc/0xa20
The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff88810b754980
which belongs to the cache skbuff_small_head of size 704
The buggy address is located 390 bytes inside of
freed 704-byte region [ffff88810b754980, ffff88810b754c40)
Other callers use that offset too, so bound it here rather than in one
caller.
Reject a header whose declared length does not fit in the packet.
ipv6_find_hdr() already fails with -EBADMSG on a malformed chain, so this
adds no new failure mode.