CVE-2026-98255
Received
Received - Intake
TCP Fast Path Exclusion of Old ACKs in Linux Kernel
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98255, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-06
Last updated on: 2026-10-06
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
tcp: exclude old ACKs from tcp fast path
Exclude old ACKs before SND.UNA from the tcp fast path
as well as ACKs after SND.NXT.
Such ACKs will fall through to the slow path, where tcp_ack()
performs the appropriate validation and challenge ACK handling
according to RFC5961 and Commit 3d501dd326fb1c7 ("tcp: do not
accept ACK of bytes we never sent").
This prevents old ACKs from being accepted
or modifying connection state as part of the fast path before
appropriate ACK validation is applied.
In particular, this prevents payload carried by a segment with
an excessively old ACK from advancing RCV.NXT before the ACK
is rejected.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 31770e34e43d6c8dee129bfee77e56c34e61f0e5 |
| Linux | Linux | 4.14 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
