Bug 2555206 (CVE-2026-98853)

Summary: CVE-2026-98853 kernel: net: gso: limit recursive IP-in-IP segmentation
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, 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 Generic Segmentation Offload (GSO) implementation. When processing deeply nested IP-in-IP packets, recursive segmentation is not properly restricted, which can exhaust kernel stack memory. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by transmitting network packets with excessive encapsulation layers, causing a kernel crash and leading to a Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-18 16:01:52 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: gso: limit recursive IP-in-IP segmentation

IP-in-IP GSO can re-enter inet_gso_segment() or ipv6_gso_segment()
for each nested IP header. encap_level tracks header bytes, not callback
depth, so a deep chain can exhaust the kernel stack. Making
inet_gso_segment() stackable introduced unbounded IPv4 nesting; IPIP
GSO/TSO later made the path reachable. The IPv6 stackable path was
introduced separately and uses the same guard.

Count IPv4 and IPv6 GSO handler entries in skb_gso_cb, initialized once
per top-level GSO operation and preserved across GRE/UDP context changes.
Use the existing IP_TUNNEL_RECURSION_LIMIT for both handlers. The first
five entries pass, and the sixth returns -EINVAL before dispatching
another GSO callback.