Bug 2559715 (CVE-2026-98969)

Summary: CVE-2026-98969 kernel: net/sched: em_text: reject unterminated algo before autoload
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
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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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's packet scheduling subsystem. A local attacker with network administration privileges can trigger this flaw by submitting a text-matching filter configuration with a non-null-terminated algorithm name. When attempting to automatically load the corresponding module, the kernel reads beyond the allocated buffer, resulting in an information disclosure of adjacent kernel memory.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-23 13:21:17 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/sched: em_text: reject unterminated algo before autoload

This is a follow-up to commit 9c572a83037a ("net/sched: fix potential
stack infoleak in em_text_dump()"), which zero-initialised the dump-side
struct. Sashiko pointed at a pre-existing bug that exposed the change-side
input-validation gap open.

em_text_change() casts the raw netlink attribute payload to struct
tcf_em_text and passes conf->algo, a 16-byte array with no enforced NUL
terminator, to textsearch_prepare().  On the TS_AUTOLOAD retry
textsearch_prepare() calls request_module("ts_%s", algo); vsnprintf()
walks %s until it finds a NUL, so an algo[] with no NUL reads past the
array into the adjacent struct fields and payload and feeds those bytes
to the usermode helper command line.  This is an out-of-bounds read and
a kernel memory disclosure.

Reject the attribute when no NUL exists within TC_EM_TEXT_ALGOSIZ bytes,
matching the check xt_string has had since 3ab720881b6e.

Conditions to recreate the bug:
- CAP_NET_ADMIN on the target netns (namespace-local via unshare -Urn
  is enough)
- install clsact on an interface, then add a basic filter with one text
  ematch whose algo[] is 16 bytes with no NUL (e.g. "A"*16) and
  pattern_len at least 1
- the add fails with -ENOENT and the kernel invokes modprobe with a
  module name made of "ts_" plus the 16 bytes and the adjacent payload