CVE-2026-72444

flow_dissector: check device type before reading ETH_ADDRS

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Aug 15, 2026
Updated
Oct 16, 2026
Reserved
Aug 9, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

flow_dissector: check device type before reading ETH_ADDRS

__skb_flow_dissect() unconditionally reads 12 bytes from eth_hdr(skb) when FLOW_DISSECTOR_KEY_ETH_ADDRS is requested. This assumes the skb has a valid Ethernet header at mac_header, which is not always the case.

The problem can be triggered by: 1. Creating a TUN device in L3 mode (IFF_TUN, hard_header_len=0) 2. Attaching a multiq qdisc with a flower filter matching on eth_src 3. Sending a packet through AF_PACKET

Since TUN in L3 mode has no link-layer header, mac_header points to the L3 data area. The flow dissector reads 12 bytes of uninitialized skb memory, which then propagates through fl_set_masked_key() and is used as a rhashtable lookup key in __fl_lookup(), as reported by KMSAN.

Rejecting the filter in the control path (at tc filter add time) is not feasible because TC filter blocks can be shared between arbitrary devices -- a filter installed on an Ethernet device may later classify packets on a headerless device through a shared block. The device association is not fixed at filter creation time.

Fix this by gating the memcpy on dev->type == ARPHRD_ETHER, which ensures only true Ethernet-framed packets have their addresses read. This is more precise than the previous hard_header_len >= 12 check, which would incorrectly pass for non-Ethernet link types like IPoIB (ARPHRD_INFINIBAND, hard_header_len=24) and FDDI (hard_header_len=21) whose L2 headers are not in Ethernet format. Additionally check skb_mac_header_was_set() to guard against the pathological case where mac_header is the unset sentinel (~0U), which would cause eth_hdr() to return a wild pointer.

For the act_mirred redirect case (Ethernet packet redirected to a non-Ethernet device sharing a TC block), zeroing the key is the correct behavior: the packet is now being classified on the target device, where Ethernet address matching is not semantically meaningful.

Note: on non-Ethernet devices, the zeroed key will match a filter configured with all-zero MAC addresses. This is an improvement over the previous behavior where uninitialized memory could randomly match any filter.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before 0fe6455b8e1a22414f39c07bc90a1df12b52ec74Affected
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before 9a65860959db594dfc1820c7fdc09285fb7556bfAffected
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before 594c90b197141944f25991b8314de5c26ee27a7eAffected
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before c6d3bcb0f934d4297ac5fa1c8656ae40694fb601Affected
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before 825de39f0c35a112148799b3cbe45af3766c018aAffected
  • 67a900cc0436d74e7ff89042371760def087680d to before bf6e8af2c8be77489bedeae9f8a9654cb710e500Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 4.2Affected
  • before 4.2Not affected
  • 6.1.178 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.6.145 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.97 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.18.40 through 6.18.*Not affected
  • 7.1.5 through 7.1.*Not affected
  • 7.2 and laterNot affected

References

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