Bug 2502470 (CVE-2026-63990) - CVE-2026-63990 kernel: bonding: refuse to enslave CAN devices
Summary: CVE-2026-63990 kernel: bonding: refuse to enslave CAN devices
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-63990
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-07-19 16:09 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-07-21 10:53 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-19 16:09:52 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bonding: refuse to enslave CAN devices

syzbot reported a kernel paging request crash in
can_rx_unregister() inside net/can/af_can.c. The crash occurs
because a virtual CAN device (vxcan) is being enslaved to a
bonding master.

During the enslavement process, the bonding driver mutates
and modifies the network device states to fit an Ethernet-like
aggregation model. However, CAN devices operate on a completely
different Layer 2 architecture, relying on the CAN mid-layer
private data structure (can_ml_priv) instead of standard
Ethernet structures. Since bonding does not initialize or
maintain these CAN structures, subsequent operations on the
half-enslaved interface (such as closing associated sockets
via isotp_release) lead to a null-pointer dereference when
accessing the CAN receiver lists.

Bonding CAN interfaces is architecturally invalid as CAN lacks
MAC addresses, ARP capabilities, and standard Ethernet
link-layer mechanisms. While generic loopback devices are
blocked globally in net/core/dev.c, virtual CAN devices
bypass this check because they do not carry the IFF_LOOPBACK
flag, despite acting as local software-loopbacks.

Fix this by explicitly blocking network devices of type
ARPHRD_CAN from being enslaved at the very beginning of
bond_enslave(). This prevents illegal state mutations,
eliminates the resulting KASAN crashes, and avoids potential
memory leaks from incomplete socket cleanups.

As the CAN support has been added a long time after bonding
the Fixes-tag points to the introduction of ARPHRD_CAN that
would have needed a specific handling in bonding_main.c.

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-07-21 10:51:44 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026071904-CVE-2026-63990-3e0a@gregkh/T


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.