CVE-2026-53214

MediumCVSS 5.5

Published: 25/06/2026(UTC)Updated: 02/07/2026(UTC)Translated: 03/07/2026(UTC)NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk

0.12%

2th percentile — higher than 2% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's cleanup_prefix_route() function for IPv6. The addrconf_get_prefix_route() function can return the fib6_null_entry sentinel with a NULL fib6_table pointer, causing a NULL pointer dereference (NPD) when setting the route expiration time. The fix adds a check before operating on the entry.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can remotely trigger a kernel panic by sending a crafted IPv6 address deletion request, leading to a denial of service (DoS).

Recommendation

Immediately update the Linux kernel to a patched version (commit in mainline). If an update is not possible, consider temporarily disabling IPv6 or restricting access to the rtnetlink interface.

Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipv6: Fix a potential NPD in cleanup_prefix_route() addrconf_get_prefix_route() can return the fib6_null_entry sentinel entry which has a NULL fib6_table pointer. Therefore, before setting the route's expiration time, check that we are not working with this entry, as otherwise a NPD will be triggered [1]. Note that the other callers of addrconf_get_prefix_route() are not susceptible to this bug: 1. addrconf_prefix_rcv(): Requests a route with the 'RTF_ADDRCONF | RTF_PREFIX_RT' flags which are not set on fib6_null_entry. 2. modify_prefix_route(): Fixed by commit a747e02430df ("ipv6: avoid possible NULL deref in modify_prefix_route()"). 3. __ipv6_ifa_notify(): Calls ip6_del_rt() which specifically checks for fib6_null_entry and returns an error. [1] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000006: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000030-0x0000000000000037] [...] Call Trace: <TASK> __kasan_check_byte (mm/kasan/common.c:573) lock_acquire.part.0 (kernel/locking/lockdep.c:5842 (discriminator 1)) _raw_spin_lock_bh (kernel/locking/spinlock.c:182 (discriminator 1)) cleanup_prefix_route (net/ipv6/addrconf.c:1280) ipv6_del_addr (net/ipv6/addrconf.c:1342) inet6_addr_del.isra.0 (net/ipv6/addrconf.c:3119) inet6_rtm_deladdr (net/ipv6/addrconf.c:4812) rtnetlink_rcv_msg (net/core/rtnetlink.c:6997) netlink_rcv_skb (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:2555) netlink_unicast (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1344) netlink_sendmsg (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1899) __sock_sendmsg (net/socket.c:802 (discriminator 4)) ____sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2698) ___sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2752) __sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2784) do_syscall_64 (arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94) entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:121)