CVE-2026-97598 PUBLISHED

ipv4: fib: bound automatic table ID allocation

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 24.09.2026 Published: 25.09.2026 Updated: 25.09.2026

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

ipv4: fib: bound automatic table ID allocation

fib_empty_table() probes every table ID from 1 until it finds a free one. IPv4 tables are stored in a 256-bucket hash table, so a dense set of IDs makes each probe walk a growing hash chain while RTNL is held.

Automatic table assignment ("ip rule ... table 0") is an IPv4-only legacy path. Bound the automatically allocated ID to 4096 so the RTNL hold stays bounded, without changing lookups of explicitly specified table IDs.

This changes user-visible behavior. A table-0 rule previously received the lowest free ID in 1..RT_TABLE_MAX (0xFFFFFFFF). After this patch the search stops at 4096 and the rule add fails with ENOBUFS if that range is fully occupied. Explicit table IDs above 4096 remain usable.

The automatic path is unused in practice: it is IPv4-only, not documented by ip-rule, uncovered by kernel selftests, and both NetworkManager and systemd refuse table 0.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from b801f54917b7c6e8540f877ee562cd0725e62ebd to bc8d01d856db106f284b19961af6112e10c3e3b4 (excl.)
  • affected from b801f54917b7c6e8540f877ee562cd0725e62ebd to fe9a906d2bff2d2707bafd6353b5e032a42aeb35 (excl.)
  • affected from b801f54917b7c6e8540f877ee562cd0725e62ebd to 2c29c053a6627dc4f12fcfe6b4860bcd9e5d7503 (excl.)
  • affected from b801f54917b7c6e8540f877ee562cd0725e62ebd to efdfb1e27a3328085b79540dfe781d537b576ea1 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 2.6.19 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 2.6.19 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.111 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.53 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.7 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc3 to * (incl.)

References