Bug 2459692 (CVE-2026-31429)

Summary:	CVE-2026-31429 kernel: net: skb: fix cross-cache free of KFENCE-allocated skb head
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	Keywords:	Security
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
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Doc Text:	A flaw was found in the Linux kernel. When the Kernel Electric Fence (KFENCE), a memory safety error detector, is enabled, a memory corruption vulnerability can occur. This happens because the `skb_kfree_head()` function incorrectly frees network buffer (skb) head data to the wrong memory cache. This misallocation can lead to system instability or denial of service.	Story Points:	---
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-04-20 11:01:32 UTC

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: skb: fix cross-cache free of KFENCE-allocated skb head

SKB_SMALL_HEAD_CACHE_SIZE is intentionally set to a non-power-of-2
value (e.g. 704 on x86_64) to avoid collisions with generic kmalloc
bucket sizes. This ensures that skb_kfree_head() can reliably use
skb_end_offset to distinguish skb heads allocated from
skb_small_head_cache vs. generic kmalloc caches.

However, when KFENCE is enabled, kfence_ksize() returns the exact
requested allocation size instead of the slab bucket size. If a caller
(e.g. bpf_test_init) allocates skb head data via kzalloc() and the
requested size happens to equal SKB_SMALL_HEAD_CACHE_SIZE, then
slab_build_skb() -> ksize() returns that exact value. After subtracting
skb_shared_info overhead, skb_end_offset ends up matching
SKB_SMALL_HEAD_HEADROOM, causing skb_kfree_head() to incorrectly free
the object to skb_small_head_cache instead of back to the original
kmalloc cache, resulting in a slab cross-cache free:

  kmem_cache_free(skbuff_small_head): Wrong slab cache. Expected
  skbuff_small_head but got kmalloc-1k

Fix this by always calling kfree(head) in skb_kfree_head(). This keeps
the free path generic and avoids allocator-specific misclassification
for KFENCE objects.

Comment 1 Keith Grant 2026-04-20 13:41:13 UTC

Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026042006-CVE-2026-31429-a0e1@gregkh/T