CVE-2026-98234 PUBLISHED

net/sched: hhf: cap hh_flows_limit at change time

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 06.10.2026 Updated: 06.10.2026

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

net/sched: hhf: cap hh_flows_limit at change time

hhf_change() stores TCA_HHF_HH_FLOWS_LIMIT with no upper bound. A huge hh_flows_limit lets each new heavy-hitter flow pass the hh_flows_current_cnt check in alloc_new_hh() and forces a fixed-size kzalloc(GFP_ATOMIC) per flow under spoofed traffic, for unbounded memory growth.

Bound the attribute with NLA_POLICY_MAX() at 2*HH_FLOWS_CNT (the hhf_init() default) and report the rejected value via extack. The deprecated nested parse is kept: legacy tc does not set NLA_F_NESTED on TCA_OPTIONS. Configs relying on hh_limit above the default were relying on unbounded, unsafe behaviour and are not supported going forward.

hhf_init() also ran hhf_change() before setting the default hh_flows_limit, so a user-supplied hh_limit at add time was clobbered back to 2048. Set the default before hhf_change() so the configured value sticks.

This is a follow-up to commit eb56a495f59b ("net/sched: hhf: clamp quantum in change and init paths"), which bounded the quantum of the same qdisc; the hh_flows_limit bound is the remaining unbounded knob of that series' scope.

Conditions to recreate the bug: CAP_NET_ADMIN in a user namespace; tc qdisc change dev X root hhf hh_limit 4294967295 succeeds and the value is echoed by tc qdisc show, unbounding heavy-hitter flow allocations; also tc qdisc add dev X root hhf hh_limit 500 stores 2048 instead of 500.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to 7adfd0a42174b85c6bd678858ecd6674f403f336 (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to 35fd423a5c5132c6f4321f6c4f0a7b4b90af830c (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to 06d2a101e89063cb0b9b459104db48bdfb0a797d (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to d8e2f1f0263b7c97b222c06070cccf13e0ab7112 (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to f3f4a5cb4a6e9b1f1f25d34dfc25f836a1601db4 (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to 1731ff1d20489afe4cd01b7d16d37f324746ac54 (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to f6547d27ce2093c5627636fb63dd0b7523c466f9 (excl.)
  • affected from 10239edf86f137ce4c39b62ea9575e8053c549a0 to 2cef2588c995722a901368def30befeef9ae55c6 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 3.14 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 3.14 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.271 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.222 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.189 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.158 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.112 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.54 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.8 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc4 to * (incl.)

References