CVE-2026-43492
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk10th percentile - higher than 10% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel, an integer underflow vulnerability was found in the mpi_read_raw_from_sgl() function in the MPI library. The bug occurs when the scatterlist occupies more bytes than the 'nbytes' parameter and the first 'nbytes + 1' bytes are zero, leading to an infinite loop and DoS.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can trigger a system soft lockup via a crafted KEYCTL_PKEY_ENCRYPT call, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) for the entire system.
Recommendation
Apply the patch from the official Linux kernel repository for versions containing commit 63ba4d67594a immediately. Updating to the latest stable kernel version eliminates the vulnerability.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: lib/crypto: mpi: Fix integer underflow in mpi_read_raw_from_sgl() Yiming reports an integer underflow in mpi_read_raw_from_sgl() when subtracting "lzeros" from the unsigned "nbytes". For this to happen, the scatterlist "sgl" needs to occupy more bytes than the "nbytes" parameter and the first "nbytes + 1" bytes of the scatterlist must be zero. Under these conditions, the while loop iterating over the scatterlist will count more zeroes than "nbytes", subtract the number of zeroes from "nbytes" and cause the underflow. When commit 2d4d1eea540b ("lib/mpi: Add mpi sgl helpers") originally introduced the bug, it couldn't be triggered because all callers of mpi_read_raw_from_sgl() passed a scatterlist whose length was equal to "nbytes". However since commit 63ba4d67594a ("KEYS: asymmetric: Use new crypto interface without scatterlists"), the underflow can now actually be triggered. When invoking a KEYCTL_PKEY_ENCRYPT system call with a larger "out_len" than "in_len" and filling the "in" buffer with zeroes, crypto_akcipher_sync_prep() will create an all-zero scatterlist used for both the "src" and "dst" member of struct akcipher_request and thereby fulfil the conditions to trigger the bug: sys_keyctl() keyctl_pkey_e_d_s() asymmetric_key_eds_op() software_key_eds_op() crypto_akcipher_sync_encrypt() crypto_akcipher_sync_prep() crypto_akcipher_encrypt() rsa_enc() mpi_read_raw_from_sgl() To the user this will be visible as a DoS as the kernel spins forever, causing soft lockup splats as a side effect. Fix it.