CVE-2026-74620
mediumCVSS v3 Base Score
5.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score
0.2%
Exploitation probability in 30 days
Top 93% most likely to be exploited
Attack Characteristics
Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Published: August 22, 2026 (15 days ago)
Last Modified: August 22, 2026
Vendor: Red Hat
Source: REDHAT
Vulnerability Report
Generated by CyberWatcher
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: act_gact, act_police: range check the fallback control action
tcf_action_check_ctrlact() range checks the primary control action:
if (!opcode)
ret = action > TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX ? -EINVAL : 0;
TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX is TC_ACT_TRAP, so kernel-internal verdicts above it
cannot be set that way. But act_gact and act_police each carry a second,
independent control action supplied by user space that never reaches that
helper - TCA_GACT_PROB.paction and TCA_POLICE_RESULT. Both only reject
TC_ACT_GOTO_CHAIN, so any other value is stored verbatim and returned
verbatim from the action.
In particular user space can store TC_ACT_CONSUMED, which is
TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX + 1 and is deliberately not part of the UAPI value
range. That verdict tells every caller the action took ownership of the
skb, so nobody frees it: sch_handle_ingress(), sch_handle_egress() and
tcf_qevent_handle() all deliberately skip the free for it. The result is
one leaked sk_buff plus its data buffer per packet traversing the filter,
unbounded, for all traffic on the chain including kernel-generated
packets.
Both are trivially deterministic. act_gact clamps tcfg_pval to >= 1, so
with pval = 1 gact_determ() returns the fallback for every packet.
act_police has no mandatory rate, so rate = 0 leaves tcfp_mtu = ~0 and
tcf_police_mtu_check() always passes.
TC_ACT_CONSUMED was added by commit 720f22fed81b ("net: sched: refactor
reinsert action"), after both goto-chain guards were written:
commit 9469f375ab09 ("net/sched: act_gact: disallow 'goto chain' on
fallback control action") and
commit c08f5ed5d625 ("net/sched: act_police: disallow 'goto chain' on
fallback control action"). Neither guard was widened when the new
verdict appeared.
Factor the existing range test out of tcf_action_check_ctrlact() as
tcf_action_valid() and apply it to both fallbacks. The helper cannot call
tcf_action_check_ctrlact() directly because that also allocates a
goto_chain, which is exactly what these two sites must not do.
Reproduced on v7.2-rc6: kmemleak reports one leaked 232-byte
skbuff_head_cache object plus its 704-byte data buffer per packet. With
this patch both configurations are rejected with -EINVAL and kmemleak
reports none.
CWE
CWE-911Affected Products
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9