CVE-2026-98493 PUBLISHED

net: ipconfig: bound DHCP option construction

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 18.10.2026 Updated: 18.10.2026

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

net: ipconfig: bound DHCP option construction

ic_dhcp_init_options() appends the hostname (option 12), vendor-class (option 60) and client-ID (option 61) options into the fixed 312-byte bootp_pkt.exten[] buffer. Only the client-ID branch checked the remaining space; the hostname and vendor-class writes were unbounded.

A 64-byte hostname together with the maximum 252-byte dhcpclass= identifier needs 18 + (2 + 64) + (2 + 252) = 338 of the 312 available bytes even before the terminating END marker, so the vendor-class memcpy runs past the end of exten[]. With CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE this is reported as a field-spanning write and, when the kernel is booted with panic_on_warn=1, aborts boot with a panic.

Route the optional options through a common helper that makes sure the option, its 2-byte header and the END marker all fit and drops an option that would not. Configurations with short options keep sending exactly the same bytes as before.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 130c0f47fdf9c533deb1136cad5136f6cb7020f0 to abcba6f080c63e403037ecdffde43170d242376a (excl.)
  • affected from 130c0f47fdf9c533deb1136cad5136f6cb7020f0 to 24e79508b237dd2a69bc6fb6ac5cf7f126178307 (excl.)
  • affected from 130c0f47fdf9c533deb1136cad5136f6cb7020f0 to cbaad2922bd5d4d303055ae9afecc8999e6b40c9 (excl.)
  • affected from 130c0f47fdf9c533deb1136cad5136f6cb7020f0 to e47a1958e12abc3a17b5231a4f21c8f1bf662e08 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 2.6.36 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 2.6.36 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.112 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.55 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.9 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc5 to * (incl.)

References