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Advisory severityHigh7.0Red Hat Linux

High [CVE-2026-64009] Check for underflow in xfrm_state_mtu

This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-64009 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

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

CVE-2026-64009 Source published Source updated

VulniPulse record published Record updated

CVE-2026-64009
Affected products & platforms
Red Hat LinuxLinux Kernel
Open source advisory

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Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfrm: Check for underflow in xfrm_state_mtu Leo Lin reported OOB write issue in esp component: xfrm_state_mtu() returns u32 but performs its arithmetic in unsigned modulo-2^32 space using an attacker-influenced "header_len + authsize + net_adj" subtracted from a small "mtu" argument.

A nobody user can install an IPv4 ESP tunnel SA with a large authentication key (XFRMA_ALG_AUTH_TRUNC, e.g. hmac(sha512), 64-byte key, 64-byte trunc), configure a small interface MTU (68 bytes), and set XFRMA_TFCPAD to a large value.

When a single UDP datagram is then sent through the tunnel, xfrm_state_mtu() underflows to a near-2^32 value, and esp_output() consumes it as a signed int via: padto = min(x->tfcpad, xfrm_state_mtu(x, mtu_cached)) esp.tfclen = padto - skb->len (assigned to int) esp.tfclen ends up negative (e.g. -207).

It is sign-extended to size_t when passed to memset() inside esp_output_fill_trailer(), producing a ~16 EB write of zeroes at skb_tail_pointer(skb). KASAN logs it as "Write of size 18446744073709551537 at addr ffff888...".

This causes the sendmsg attempt to fail with ENETUNREACH. A local, unprivileged user can trigger an integer underflow in the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) module's Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) calculation.

Affected versions

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

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 7 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 · high-confidence parse· fetched 7 days ago·verify at source

Mitigation checklist

Recommended fix / mitigation
  • Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.

Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 7 days ago·verify at source

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