Bug 2502259 (CVE-2026-63834)

Summary: CVE-2026-63834 kernel: batman-adv: tp_meter: restrict number of unacked list entries
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's batman-adv throughput meter. A remote attacker could exploit an unbound list of unacknowledged packets by sending specially crafted messages. This could force the system to allocate excessive memory or waste significant CPU cycles, leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) condition.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-19 13:04:30 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

batman-adv: tp_meter: restrict number of unacked list entries

When the unacked_list is unbound, an attacker could send messages with
small lengths and appropriated seqno + gaps to force the receiver to
allocate more and more unacked_list entries. And the end either causing an
out-of-memory situation or increase the management overhead for the (large)
list that significant portions of CPU cycles are wasted in searching
through the list.

When limiting the list to a specific number, it is important to still
correctly add a new entry to the list. But if the list became larger than
the limit, the last entry of the list (with the highest seqno) must be
dropped to still allow the earlier seqnos to finish and therefore to
continue the process. Otherwise, the process might get stuck with too high
seqnos which are not handled by batadv_tp_ack_unordered().