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Advisory severityMedium5.5Red Hat Linux

Medium [CVE-2026-53238] validate unlabeled address and mask attribute lengths

This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-53238 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.

CVE-2026-53238 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

CVE-2026-53238
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netlabel: validate unlabeled address and mask attribute lengths netlbl_unlabel_addrinfo_get() used the address attribute length to determine whether the attribute data could be read as an IPv4 or IPv6 address, but did not independently validate the corresponding mask attribute length.

A crafted Generic Netlink request could therefore provide a valid IPv4/IPv6 address attribute with a shorter mask attribute, which would later be read as a full struct in_addr or struct in6_addr. NLA_BINARY policy lengths are maximum lengths by default, so use NLA_POLICY_EXACT_LEN() for the unlabeled IPv4/IPv6 address and mask attributes.

This rejects short attributes during policy validation and also exposes the exact length requirements through policy introspection. Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Weakness: CWE-125. Affected Red Hat products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

Will not fix / out of support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Red Hat does not currently list a fixing RHSA for this CVE.

Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat package: kernel-rt.

Is CVE-2026-53238 exploited?

No exploitation is reported in the sources VulniPulse tracks: CVE-2026-53238 is not in the CISA KEV catalog (checked ) and this advisory does not report exploitation. That is not proof the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53238?

The advisory VulniPulse tracks names no fixed release. Follow Red Hat's guidance for workarounds and updates.

Confirm against the vendor advisory before you patch.

Affected versions

No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative. Check it before change work.

Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 15 days ago·verify at source

Fixed versions

No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists. Confirm against the vendor advisory.

Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 15 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation

The source record does not include mitigation steps. That does not mean no fix exists. Read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.

Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 15 days ago·verify at source

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