CVE-2026-98401
Received
Received - Intake
Kernel Oops in Linux Kernel Due to Stale Transport Header in Tunnel Decapsulation
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98401, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-14
Last updated on: 2026-10-19
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: iptunnel: fix stale transport header during tunnel decapsulation
Syzbot reported a crash in qdisc_pkt_len_segs_init() caused by a stale
transport_header offset after tunnel decapsulation.
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffed102091a42e
Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 340 Comm: qdisc_uaf_repro Not tainted 7.2.0-rc4-00061-g248951ddc14d #256 PREEMPT(full)
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:__asan_load2
<IRQ>
qdisc_pkt_len_segs_init (net/core/dev.c:4145)
__dev_queue_xmit (net/core/dev.c:4787)
br_dev_queue_push_xmit (net/bridge/br_forward.c:53)
br_handle_frame_finish (net/bridge/br_input.c:229)
br_handle_frame (net/bridge/br_input.c:315)
__netif_receive_skb_core.constprop.0 (net/core/dev.c:6099)
__netif_receive_skb_list_core (net/core/dev.c:6287)
netif_receive_skb_list_internal (net/core/dev.c:6445)
napi_complete_done (net/core/dev.c:6813)
gro_cell_poll (net/core/gro_cells.c:74)
__napi_poll (net/core/dev.c:7735)
net_rx_action (net/core/dev.c:7798 net/core/dev.c:7955)
handle_softirqs (kernel/softirq.c:622)
do_softirq (kernel/softirq.c:523 kernel/softirq.c:510 )
__local_bh_enable_ip (kernel/softirq.c:450)
tun_get_user (drivers/net/tun.c:1986 (discriminator 1))
tun_chr_write_iter (drivers/net/tun.c:2032)
The issue is completely latent until qdisc read transport header in
commit 7fb4c1967011 ("net: pull headers in qdisc_pkt_len_segs_init()").
The crash requires four conditions to line up:
1. The incoming packet is encapsulated and carries GSO metadata. The outer
transport header offset is stored in skb->transport_header while the
packet is still in the outer tunnel context.
2. The tunnel receiver strips the outer headers. skb->data is advanced to
the inner frame, but skb->transport_header is left pointing to the
now-removed outer L4 header, so it becomes a negative offset relative to
the new data.
3. The inner frame is not delivered to the local IP stack. Instead, it
is forwarded at L2 by a bridge or HSR, so ip_rcv_core() never runs and
the transport header is not reset to the inner L4 offset.
4. The forwarding path calls __dev_queue_xmit(), which enters
qdisc_pkt_len_segs_init(). That function computes the GSO header length
from skb_transport_offset(skb). Because the offset is negative, the
unsigned cast overflows and pskb_may_pull(skb, hdr_len +
sizeof(struct tcphdr)) reads past the end of the skb, triggering a
KASAN fault or page fault.
The issue specifically requires GSO packets (shinfo->gso_size != 0), which
are processed/aggregated through gro_cells. Fix this by clearing
transport_header to the ~0U sentinel in gro_cell for all tunnnel driver.
GTP does not support GRO/GSO, drop the evil GSO packets in GTP directly.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 |
| Linux | Linux | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 |
| Linux | Linux | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 |
| Linux | Linux | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 |
| Linux | Linux | 2.6.12 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
