CVE-2026-89563
Received
Received - Intake
Buffer Overflow Fix in Linux Kernel IPv6 Tunnel
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-89563, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-11
Last updated on: 2026-09-11
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ip6_tunnel: use skb_cow_head() in ip6_tnl_xmit()
ip6_tnl_xmit() may need to expand headroom before it can push the
outer IPv6 and optional encap headers. It currently does that with
skb_realloc_headroom(), copies skb->sk ownership, consumes the original
skb, and then continues processing with the replacement skb kept only in
its local variable.
That is safe only if the helper cannot fail afterwards. But this helper
still has post-reallocation error exits. collect_md tunnels reject
non-NONE encap after the replacement, and ip6_tnl_encap() can also fail
later. In those cases the helper returns an error to its callers while
the caller still only has the original skb pointer.
Both ip6_tnl_start_xmit() and the IPv6 GRE paths free the caller skb on
error, so they can end up freeing an skb that ip6_tnl_xmit() already
consumed.
Use skb_cow_head() instead. It provides the required headroom and
writability without privately replacing the caller-owned skb, so later
error returns cannot leave callers with a stale pointer.
The Ethernet users, ip6gretap and ip6erspan, clear IFF_TX_SKB_SHARING
and already call skb_cow_head() before entering ip6_tnl_xmit(). They do
not rely on the removed skb_shared() reallocation. This also makes the
IPv6 tunnel path consistent with ip_tunnel_xmit().
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 |
