CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-97959

Unknown
Published: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the net/sched: cls_route module has a memory leak. When an existing route4 filter is moved to a different bucket, the old emptied bucket is never freed and remains in head->table[], preventing proper filter deletion and causing a leak of the empty tcf_proto.

Risk Assessment

An organization may experience gradual kernel memory leakage under heavy use of route4 filters, leading to performance degradation and, in extreme cases, resource exhaustion and system failure.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that refcounts filters in a bucket and frees the bucket when the count drops to zero. If updating is not possible, limit the use of route4 filters in production environments.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: cls_route: free emptied bucket on filter move route4_change can move an existing filter to a different top-level bucket: route4_set_parms recomputes the handle from TCA_ROUTE4_TO/ FROM/IIF, and the handle-mismatch check is gated on the 'new' flag, so for an existing filter the new handle may differ from the old one and land in a different bucket. When this happens, the filter is unlinked from the old bucket, but the bucket itself is never freed once it goes empty. The stale empty bucket remains in head->table[], causing route4_delete to report *last=false even after the last live filter is gone. That pins the empty tcf_proto and causes a leak. Fix this by refcounting the filters linked to a bucket and freeing the bucket when the count drops to zero. The existing scan in route4_delete goes away with it. The count is updated at all sites that link or unlink a filter during add, change and delete, and the bucket is dropped from head->table[] as soon as it reaches zero. Conditions to recreate the bug: CONFIG_NET_CLS_ROUTE4=y, CONFIG_NET_SCH_INGRESS=y, CONFIG_NET_CLS_ACT=y. tc qdisc replace dev lo clsact tc filter add dev lo ingress protocol ip pref 100 route from 1 to 1 tc filter change dev lo ingress protocol ip pref 100 handle 0x10001 \ route from 1 to 2 tc filter del dev lo ingress protocol ip pref 100 handle 0x10002 \ route from 1 to 2 tc filter show dev lo ingress | grep -c 'pref 100 route chain 0 '

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS