CVE-2026-81665 PUBLISHED

Corosync: corosync: heap-based buffer overflow in totempg assembly buffer during fragmented message reassembly

Assigner: redhat
Reserved: 27.08.2026 Published: 04.09.2026 Updated: 04.09.2026

A heap-based buffer overflow was found in Corosync's Totem Process Group (totempg) message reassembly. When processing fragmented multicast messages, the buffer used to reassemble fragments lacks a runtime bounds check in release builds. A network-adjacent attacker able to send crafted multicast protocol messages to the cluster could cause a heap buffer overflow with attacker-controlled data. This can crash the Corosync daemon, causing a denial of service to the entire cluster, and may potentially allow further exploitation given sufficient heap-corruption control.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
Versions Default: affected
Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Versions Default: affected
Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Versions Default: affected
Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Versions Default: affected
Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
Versions Default: affected
Vendor Red Hat
Product Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
Versions Default: affected

Workarounds

There is no complete mitigation for this vulnerability short of a fix, but the following steps significantly reduce risk:

  1. Ensure cluster message authentication is enabled in corosync.conf: set crypto_cipher to aes256 and crypto_hash to sha256 (or stronger) in the totem {} block, with a shared key generated by corosync-keygen. This is the default when clusters are configured via 'pcs cluster setup', and disabling it (cipher=none/hash=none) is an explicitly unsupported configuration per upstream maintainer guidance.
  2. Restrict network access to the cluster communication ports (default 5405-5412/UDP) to trusted cluster node addresses only, using firewalld or other firewall rules.
  3. Ensure SELinux is running in enforcing mode on cluster nodes to limit the impact of any successful exploitation.

Credits

  • Red Hat would like to thank Tristan Madani (Talence Security) for reporting this issue.

References

Problem Types

  • Heap-based Buffer Overflow CWE