CVE-2026-74704 PUBLISHED

net/sched: sch_cake: drop WARN_ON(1) for malformed packets in ACK filter

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 15.08.2026 Published: 22.08.2026 Updated: 22.08.2026

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.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to c1693b7844a6c06d31a565e5a494948034dfd235 (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to a4b52612004a5639c4bfc30ba93ba414b8326e2a (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to ae1b2f8e21a41e7c7e75511bea0c4ccc59ec1bd3 (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to 0c4882bff34558d8d53fb04c3e96da5c327c7dc8 (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to 2504a76e5c0694e14e15562730e1339f2d9f9458 (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to cd2f1d9fe8a507c2dc86ad326fe221f121c47734 (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to a1ae353d8355407c1bea971d1c1af5e7f242bb7d (excl.)
  • affected from 8b7138814f29933898ecd31dfc83e35a30ee69f5 to 2a33516f9ef59ad11844d4fc152f889449b5daf3 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 4.19 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 4.19 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.265 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.216 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.183 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.152 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.104 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.45 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.9 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2 to * (incl.)

References