Bug 2516571 (CVE-2026-72444)

Summary: CVE-2026-72444 kernel: flow_dissector: check device type before reading ETH_ADDRS
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
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's flow_dissector component. When processing network packets on non-Ethernet devices, such as a TUN device in L3 mode, with specific traffic control filters, the flow_dissector can attempt to read Ethernet header information that does not exist. This leads to the use of uninitialized kernel memory as a lookup key, which could result in information disclosure or unexpected packet matching behavior.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:19:32 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

flow_dissector: check device type before reading ETH_ADDRS

__skb_flow_dissect() unconditionally reads 12 bytes from eth_hdr(skb)
when FLOW_DISSECTOR_KEY_ETH_ADDRS is requested. This assumes the skb
has a valid Ethernet header at mac_header, which is not always the case.

The problem can be triggered by:
 1. Creating a TUN device in L3 mode (IFF_TUN, hard_header_len=0)
 2. Attaching a multiq qdisc with a flower filter matching on eth_src
 3. Sending a packet through AF_PACKET

Since TUN in L3 mode has no link-layer header, mac_header points to
the L3 data area. The flow dissector reads 12 bytes of uninitialized
skb memory, which then propagates through fl_set_masked_key() and is
used as a rhashtable lookup key in __fl_lookup(), as reported by KMSAN.

Rejecting the filter in the control path (at tc filter add time) is
not feasible because TC filter blocks can be shared between arbitrary
devices -- a filter installed on an Ethernet device may later classify
packets on a headerless device through a shared block. The device
association is not fixed at filter creation time.

Fix this by gating the memcpy on dev->type == ARPHRD_ETHER, which
ensures only true Ethernet-framed packets have their addresses read.
This is more precise than the previous hard_header_len >= 12 check,
which would incorrectly pass for non-Ethernet link types like IPoIB
(ARPHRD_INFINIBAND, hard_header_len=24) and FDDI (hard_header_len=21)
whose L2 headers are not in Ethernet format. Additionally check
skb_mac_header_was_set() to guard against the pathological case where
mac_header is the unset sentinel (~0U), which would cause eth_hdr() to
return a wild pointer.

For the act_mirred redirect case (Ethernet packet redirected to a
non-Ethernet device sharing a TC block), zeroing the key is the correct
behavior: the packet is now being classified on the target device, where
Ethernet address matching is not semantically meaningful.

Note: on non-Ethernet devices, the zeroed key will match a filter
configured with all-zero MAC addresses. This is an improvement over the
previous behavior where uninitialized memory could randomly match any
filter.