Medium [CVE-2026-68288] fix info leak in NET_DM_ATTR_PAYLOAD
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-68288 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: drop_monitor: fix info leak in NET_DM_ATTR_PAYLOAD net_dm_packet_report_fill() and net_dm_hw_packet_report_fill() open code the NET_DM_ATTR_PAYLOAD attribute to avoid zeroing the packet payload before overwriting it with skb_copy_bits(). skb_put() reserves nla_total_size(payload_len), i.e. the header plus the NLA_ALIGN() padding, but only payload_len bytes are copied in.
When payload_len is not a multiple of 4 the 1-3 padding bytes are never initialized and are leaked to user space inside the netlink message.
KMSAN confirms the leak for the software path when the packet payload length is not 4-byte aligned: BUG: KMSAN: kernel-infoleak in _copy_to_iter _copy_to_iter __skb_datagram_iter skb_copy_datagram_iter netlink_recvmsg sock_recvmsg __sys_recvfrom Uninit was created at: kmem_cache_alloc_node_noprof __alloc_skb net_dm_packet_work Bytes 173-175 of 176 are uninitialized Use __nla_reserve(), which sets up the attribute header and zeroes the padding, instead of open coding the attribute construction.
A local attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive kernel memory information. Red Hat severity: Low — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
Weakness: CWE-908.
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 2 hours 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 2 hours ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
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