Vulnerability in Linux
CVE-2026-64009
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfrm: Check for underflow in xfrm_state_mtu Leo Lin reported OOB write issue in esp component: xfrm_state_mtu() returns u32 but performs its arithmetic in unsigned modulo-2^32 space using an attacker-influenced "header_len + authsize + net_adj" subtracted from a small "mtu" argument. A nobody user can install an IPv4 ESP tunnel SA with a large authentication key (XFRMA_ALG_AUTH_TRUNC, e.g. hmac(sha512), 64-byte key, 64-byte trunc), configure a small interface MTU (68 bytes), and set XFRMA_TFCPAD to a large value. When a single UDP datagram is then sent through the tunnel, xfrm_state_mtu() underflows to a near-2^32 value, and esp_output() consumes it as a signed int via: padto = min(x->tfcpad, xfrm_state_mtu(x, mtu_cached)) esp.tfclen = padto - skb->len (assigned to int) esp.tfclen ends up negative (e.g. -207). It is sign-extended to size_t when passed to memset() inside esp_output_fill_trailer(), producing a ~16 EB write of zeroes at skb_tail_pointer(skb). KASAN logs it as "Write of size 18446744073709551537 at addr ffff888...". Check for underflow and return 1. This causes the sendmsg attempt to fail with ENETUNREACH.
EPSS: 0.001 (3.9th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.
Affected products
- Linux — versions c5c2523893747f88a83376abad310c8ad13f7197, 2.6.22, 0
References
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-64009?
- CVE-2026-64009 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-07-19.
- How severe is CVE-2026-64009?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.