CVE-2026-98850 PUBLISHED

net/packet: prevent TX_RING byte count overflow

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/packet: prevent TX_RING byte count overflow

tpacket_snd() drains every SEND_REQUEST frame in a TX ring and adds each valid packet length to the signed int len_sum. Userspace can recycle completed frames concurrently, so a single blocking send call is not bounded by the ring size.

After enough successful transmissions len_sum wraps into the negative range. In particular, 65536 65535-byte frames followed by a 65007-byte frame produce 0xfffffdef, or -EIOCBQUEUED. sock_sendmsg_nosec() treats that as an impossible return and triggers a BUG. On systems configured to panic on oops, a CAP_NET_RAW holder can panic the host kernel.

Stop before the next frame would make the byte count exceed INT_MAX. The positive short count leaves that frame pending for a later send call.

A two-thread TPACKET_V2 reproducer triggered the BUG on an arm64 build of Linux 7.3-rc4. With this change, the same reproducer returned the expected positive short count without an oops.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 69e3c75f4d541a6eb151b3ef91f34033cb3ad6e1 to be12b221c0301111eeb023be04add3c6ad7c21fe (excl.)
  • affected from 69e3c75f4d541a6eb151b3ef91f34033cb3ad6e1 to 69ca64bbb528898916f309552053c32a04a36ebc (excl.)
  • affected from 69e3c75f4d541a6eb151b3ef91f34033cb3ad6e1 to 9fd63d284e251332f4874ef9023cde472f315f86 (excl.)
  • affected from 69e3c75f4d541a6eb151b3ef91f34033cb3ad6e1 to 2cf81fc9505b148b1b70068303ea6ea4b1212403 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 2.6.31 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 2.6.31 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.113 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.56 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.10 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc6 to * (incl.)

References