CVE-2026-98801
Received
Received - Intake
SO_RESERVE_MEM Restriction to TCP Sockets in Linux Kernel
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98801, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-18
Last updated on: 2026-10-18
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: restrict SO_RESERVE_MEM to TCP sockets and cap max value
Commit 2bb2f5fb21b0 ("net: add new socket option SO_RESERVE_MEM") and
commit d00c8ee31729 ("net: fix possible NULL deref in sock_reserve_memory")
only checked sk_has_account(sk), which is true for both TCP and UDP
sockets.
However, SO_RESERVE_MEM and sk_unused_reserved_mem() are currently only
supported by TCP:
- On UDP sockets, sk->sk_forward_alloc is protected by
sk->sk_receive_queue.lock, whereas sock_reserve_memory() and
sock_release_reserved_memory() only acquire lock_sock(sk). Concurrent
UDP packet reception/release and setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM) corrupt
sk_forward_alloc and memcg accounting.
- udp_rmem_release() reclaims excess sk_forward_alloc without
accounting for sk_unused_reserved_mem(sk).
Restrict sock_reserve_memory() to TCP sockets (sk_is_tcp(sk)) for now.
Supporting SO_RESERVE_MEM for UDP (acquiring sk_receive_queue.lock and
honoring sk_unused_reserved_mem() in udp_rmem_release()) can be done in
a future net-next series if needed.
In addition, reject val > SZ_1G with -EINVAL in
sk_setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM). Without an upper bound, values near
INT_MAX cause sk_mem_pages(delta) and (pages << PAGE_SHIFT) to overflow
32-bit signed int, corrupting sk->sk_forward_alloc and
sk->sk_reserved_mem. Using a page-aligned cap (SZ_1G) ensures that the
page-rounded sk->sk_reserved_mem reported by getsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM)
can always be passed back to setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM).
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 2bb2f5fb21b0486ff69b7b4a1fe03a760527d133 |
| Linux | Linux | 2bb2f5fb21b0486ff69b7b4a1fe03a760527d133 |
| Linux | Linux | 2bb2f5fb21b0486ff69b7b4a1fe03a760527d133 |
| Linux | Linux | 2bb2f5fb21b0486ff69b7b4a1fe03a760527d133 |
| Linux | Linux | 5.16 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
