Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-80793

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipv4: reject undersized MTUs in ip_do_fragment() ip_do_fragment() subtracts the IPv4 header length from the effective MTU and passes the resulting payload MTU to ip_frag_next(). If the effective MTU is smaller than hlen + 8, ip_frag_next() rounds the fragment payload length down to zero. The fragmentation state then never makes forward progress: state->left, state->ptr and state->offset stay unchanged while ip_do_fragment() keeps allocating and transmitting header-only fragments until the softlockup detector fires. This is reproducible with a route installed using "mtu lock 20", but it is also reproducible without route MTU lock, for example by forwarding a packet to a device whose MTU is 20. Fix it in ip_do_fragment() by rejecting mtu < hlen + 8 with -EMSGSIZE, matching the existing IPv6 fragmentation check.

Published · last modified .

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (8.7th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 9th percentile — 8.7% 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-2026-80793: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: 0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 2.6.12

References