Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-74752

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sctp: validate cookie AUTH state before use When cookie authentication is disabled, COOKIE_ECHO restores fixed-size AUTH fields directly from peer-controlled cookie bytes. A forged RANDOM length, HMAC list, or CHUNKS list can then reach association consumers with lengths or identifiers that were never validated against the local backing arrays. A forged RANDOM length can cause out-of-bounds reads during key-vector construction. A forged HMAC identifier also caused a 32-byte write past a zero-length AUTH chunk, providing a primitive for a local privilege escalation chain. Validate the cookie's RANDOM, HMACS, and CHUNKS parameters at the cookie trust boundary before copying them into the association. Reject invalid types, malformed lengths, unsupported HMAC identifiers, HMAC lists without SHA1, and forbidden chunk ids.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.007 (49.7th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 50th percentile — 49.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-74752: held from 0.004 to 0.007.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.007 · change: +0.002

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 2.6.24

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-74752?
CVE-2026-74752 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2026-08-26.
How severe is CVE-2026-74752?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.