CVE-2026-81003
Received
Received - Intake
Buffer Overflow in Linux Kernel AF_IUCV
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-81003, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-11
Last updated on: 2026-09-14
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/iucv: filter frames in afiucv_hs_rcv() by ingress device
afiucv_hs_rcv() selects a socket from iucv_sk_list by matching four 8-byte
name fields in the transport header alone. No check is made against the
net_device the frame arrived on.
This can cause a frame arriving on any netdev to be delivered to an AF_IUCV
socket. Three problems follow.
First, a frame arriving over HiperSockets can be delivered to a socket
bound to the classic z/VM IUCV transport, which has iucv->hs_dev == NULL.
iucv_sock_bind() takes the classic path whenever the requested userid
matches iucv_userid, even on a guest that also has a HiperSockets device
carrying the same identifier. The child socket created by
afiucv_hs_callback_syn() for such a match inherits hs_dev = NULL and
transport = AF_IUCV_TRANS_HIPER, so the first send() on it returns -ENODEV.
The socket delivered to accept() is unusable.
Second, a frame arriving on one netdev can be delivered to a socket bound
to a different IQD device. Which can lead to
- Accept-queue exhaustion (DoS)
- Attacker-controlled peer identity in the child socket
- Data injection into existing sockets
- Fabric noise on the IQD fabric, where bogus replies are sent
- killing established connections
Third, all AF_IUCV sockets live in init_net, as iucv_sock_alloc() calls
sk_alloc(&init_net, ...). But even frames arriving on netdev devices in a
namespace can be delivered to an IUCV socket. So a process in an
unprivileged user and network namespace holding only the CAP_NET_RAW
capability valid within that namespace can send a raw ETH_P_AF_IUCV frame
on its own lo device and have it matched against init_net sockets.
Fix all three by skipping any socket whose hs_dev does not match the
ingress device. A classic z/VM IUCV socket has hs_dev == NULL; the ingress
dev is never NULL, so classic sockets are skipped automatically. An unbound
HIPER socket also has hs_dev == NULL and is skipped. A bound HIPER socket
is only reachable from the exact IQD device it was bound to. Because hs_dev
is always a device in init_net (iucv_sock_bind() scans
for_each_netdev_rcu(&init_net, ...) exclusively), a frame whose ingress
device belongs to another namespace never matches any socket.
Note that AF_IUCV over HiperSockets provides no per-connection
authentication: no sequence numbers, no TLS, no nonce. The four name fields
identifying a connection are exchanged in plaintext on the shared
HiperSockets segment (VCHID). Any host on the same HiperSockets segment
could spoof any frame type against an existing connection. That is a
protocol-level property unchanged by this patch. The fix reduces the attack
surface to peers present on the same HiperSockets segment.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
