CVE-2026-53176
CriticalCVSS 9.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk32th percentile — higher than 32% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel's IB/isert driver, a vulnerability was found due to missing lower bound validation of iSER login PDU length. A remote initiator can send a packet shorter than ISER_HEADERS_LEN (76 bytes), causing an underflow in payload length calculation and resulting in a negative value. This negative length is then used in memcpy(), leading to an out-of-bounds write and system crash.
Risk Assessment
An unauthenticated attacker can remotely crash the iSCSI target node, causing denial of service for storage services and potential data unavailability.
Recommendation
Apply the kernel security patch that rejects login PDUs shorter than ISER_HEADERS_LEN immediately. Update all systems using the IB/isert driver.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: IB/isert: Reject login PDUs shorter than ISER_HEADERS_LEN In drivers/infiniband/ulp/isert/ib_isert.c, isert_login_recv_done() computes the login request payload length as wc->byte_len minus ISER_HEADERS_LEN with no lower bound, and login_req_len is a signed int. A remote iSER initiator can post a login Send work request carrying fewer than ISER_HEADERS_LEN (76) bytes, so the subtraction underflows and login_req_len becomes negative. isert_rx_login_req() then reads that negative length back into a signed int, takes size = min(rx_buflen, MAX_KEY_VALUE_PAIRS), and because the min() is signed it keeps the negative value; the value is then passed as the memcpy() length and sign-extended to a multi-gigabyte size_t. The copy into the 8192-byte login->req_buf runs far out of bounds and faults, crashing the target node. The login phase precedes iSCSI authentication, so no credentials are required to reach this path. Reject any login PDU shorter than ISER_HEADERS_LEN before the subtraction, mirroring the existing early return on a failed work completion, so login_req_len can never go negative. The upper bound was already safe: a posted login buffer cannot deliver more than ISER_RX_PAYLOAD_SIZE, so the difference stays at or below MAX_KEY_VALUE_PAIRS and the existing min() clamps it; only the missing lower bound needs to be added.

