CVE-2026-23343
Published: 25 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-23343 is a high-severity Out-of-bounds Write (CWE-787) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 4.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Timely application of Linux kernel patches implementing negative tailroom checks directly resolves the XDP frag_size mismatch and unsigned overflow leading to memory corruption.
Validating inputs such as XDP receive queue frag_size and tailroom calculations prevents invalid buffer adjustments that trigger the vulnerability.
Kernel memory protections like KASLR, SMEP, and SMAP mitigate exploitation of memory corruption resulting from excessive tail growth in XDP.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Kernel memory corruption in XDP path directly enables local exploitation for privilege escalation (T1068) via crafted packet processing; secondary DoS impact possible but not primary mapping.
NVD Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xdp: produce a warning when calculated tailroom is negative Many ethernet drivers report xdp Rx queue frag size as being the same as DMA write size. However, the only user…
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of this field, namely bpf_xdp_frags_increase_tail(), clearly expects a truesize. Such difference leads to unspecific memory corruption issues under certain circumstances, e.g. in ixgbevf maximum DMA write size is 3 KB, so when running xskxceiver's XDP_ADJUST_TAIL_GROW_MULTI_BUFF, 6K packet fully uses all DMA-writable space in 2 buffers. This would be fine, if only rxq->frag_size was properly set to 4K, but value of 3K results in a negative tailroom, because there is a non-zero page offset. We are supposed to return -EINVAL and be done with it in such case, but due to tailroom being stored as an unsigned int, it is reported to be somewhere near UINT_MAX, resulting in a tail being grown, even if the requested offset is too much (it is around 2K in the abovementioned test). This later leads to all kinds of unspecific calltraces. [ 7340.337579] xskxceiver[1440]: segfault at 1da718 ip 00007f4161aeac9d sp 00007f41615a6a00 error 6 [ 7340.338040] xskxceiver[1441]: segfault at 7f410000000b ip 00000000004042b5 sp 00007f415bffecf0 error 4 [ 7340.338179] in libc.so.6[61c9d,7f4161aaf000+160000] [ 7340.339230] in xskxceiver[42b5,400000+69000] [ 7340.340300] likely on CPU 6 (core 0, socket 6) [ 7340.340302] Code: ff ff 01 e9 f4 fe ff ff 0f 1f 44 00 00 4c 39 f0 74 73 31 c0 ba 01 00 00 00 f0 0f b1 17 0f 85 ba 00 00 00 49 8b 87 88 00 00 00 <4c> 89 70 08 eb cc 0f 1f 44 00 00 48 8d bd f0 fe ff ff 89 85 ec fe [ 7340.340888] likely on CPU 3 (core 0, socket 3) [ 7340.345088] Code: 00 00 00 ba 00 00 00 00 be 00 00 00 00 89 c7 e8 31 ca ff ff 89 45 ec 8b 45 ec 85 c0 78 07 b8 00 00 00 00 eb 46 e8 0b c8 ff ff <8b> 00 83 f8 69 74 24 e8 ff c7 ff ff 8b 00 83 f8 0b 74 18 e8 f3 c7 [ 7340.404334] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0x6d255010bdffc: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI [ 7340.405972] CPU: 7 UID: 0 PID: 1439 Comm: xskxceiver Not tainted 6.19.0-rc1+ #21 PREEMPT(lazy) [ 7340.408006] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.17.0-5.fc42 04/01/2014 [ 7340.409716] RIP: 0010:lookup_swap_cgroup_id+0x44/0x80 [ 7340.410455] Code: 83 f8 1c 73 39 48 ba ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 03 48 8b 04 c5 20 55 fa bd 48 21 d1 48 89 ca 83 e1 01 48 d1 ea c1 e1 04 48 8d 04 90 <8b> 00 48 83 c4 10 d3 e8 c3 cc cc cc cc 31 c0 e9 98 b7 dd 00 48 89 [ 7340.412787] RSP: 0018:ffffcc5c04f7f6d0 EFLAGS: 00010202 [ 7340.413494] RAX: 0006d255010bdffc RBX: ffff891f477895a8 RCX: 0000000000000010 [ 7340.414431] RDX: 0001c17e3fffffff RSI: 00fa070000000000 RDI: 000382fc7fffffff [ 7340.415354] RBP: 00fa070000000000 R08: ffffcc5c04f7f8f8 R09: ffffcc5c04f7f7d0 [ 7340.416283] R10: ffff891f4c1a7000 R11: ffffcc5c04f7f9c8 R12: ffffcc5c04f7f7d0 [ 7340.417218] R13: 03ffffffffffffff R14: 00fa06fffffffe00 R15: ffff891f47789500 [ 7340.418229] FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff891ffdfaa000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 7340.419489] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 7340.420286] CR2: 00007f415bfffd58 CR3: 0000000103f03002 CR4: 0000000000772ef0 [ 7340.421237] PKRU: 55555554 [ 7340.421623] Call Trace: [ 7340.421987] <TASK> [ 7340.422309] ? softleaf_from_pte+0x77/0xa0 [ 7340.422855] swap_pte_batch+0xa7/0x290 [ 7340.423363] zap_nonpresent_ptes.constprop.0.isra.0+0xd1/0x270 [ 7340.424102] zap_pte_range+0x281/0x580 [ 7340.424607] zap_pmd_range.isra.0+0xc9/0x240 [ 7340.425177] unmap_page_range+0x24d/0x420 [ 7340.425714] unmap_vmas+0xa1/0x180 [ 7340.426185] exit_mmap+0xe1/0x3b0 [ 7340.426644] __mmput+0x41/0x150 [ 7340.427098] exit_mm+0xb1/0x110 [ 7340.427539] do_exit+0x1b2/0x460 [ 7340.427992] do_group_exit+0x2d/0xc0 [ 7340.428477] get_signal+0x79d/0x7e0 [ 7340.428957] arch_do_signal_or_restart+0x34/0x100 [ 7340.429571] exit_to_user_mode_loop+0x8e/0x4c0 [ 7340.430159] do_syscall_64+0x188/ ---truncated---
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-23343 is a vulnerability in the Linux kernel's eXpress Data Path (XDP) subsystem, specifically affecting the handling of receive queue fragment sizes in ethernet drivers. Many drivers incorrectly report the XDP Rx queue frag_size as the DMA write size rather than the true size expected by bpf_xdp_frags_increase_tail(). This mismatch can result in a negative tailroom calculation during operations like XDP_ADJUST_TAIL_GROW_MULTI_BUFF, such as in the ixgbevf driver where a 3 KB DMA limit and 6 KB packet lead to improper buffer handling due to a non-zero page offset. Because tailroom is stored as an unsigned int, the negative value wraps around to near UINT_MAX, causing excessive tail growth and subsequent unspecific memory corruption, manifesting as segmentation faults, kernel oops, and general protection faults.
A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N) in an unprivileged scope (S:U). Exploitation occurs when processing XDP packets that trigger the tailroom miscalculation, as demonstrated in tests with the xskxceiver tool running on kernel version 6.19.0-rc1. Successful exploitation leads to high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H), including memory corruption that triggers call traces, segfaults at invalid addresses, and kernel panics during memory management operations like page table walks and process exit.
The provided kernel patch references detail the mitigation, which adds a warning when the calculated tailroom is negative and ensures proper return of -EINVAL instead of allowing the unsigned overflow. Commits such as 01379540452a02bbc52f639d45dd365cd3624efb and others in the stable kernel repository implement this check in bpf_xdp_frags_increase_tail() to prevent invalid tail adjustments, resolving the memory corruption in affected drivers like ixgbevf. Security practitioners should apply these upstream patches to vulnerable Linux kernels supporting XDP.
Details
- CWE(s)