Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-80681

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vxlan: re-fetch eth header after route_shortcircuit() Before route_shortcircuit(), the eth header pointer is cached from eth_hdr(skb). Inside route_shortcircuit(), pskb_may_pull() can be called, which may reallocate skb->head. In this case, returning to vxlan_xmit() leaves the cached eth pointer pointing to freed memory, leading to a use-after-free when dereferencing eth->h_dest. Fix this by updating eth = eth_hdr(skb) after calling route_shortcircuit().

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: 0.005 (41.0th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 41st percentile — 41.0% 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-2026-80681: held from 0.005 to 0.005.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: -0.000

Affected products

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-80681?
CVE-2026-80681 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2026-08-28.
How severe is CVE-2026-80681?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.