CVE-2026-45859
Published: 27 May 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-45859 is a high-severity an unspecified weakness vulnerability in Kernel (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked at the 44.2th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-32325
Vulnerability details
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: nfnetlink_queue: do shared-unconfirmed check before segmentation Ulrich reports a regression with nfqueue: If an application did not set the 'F_GSO' capability flag and a gso packet with an unconfirmed…
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nf_conn entry is received all packets are now dropped instead of queued, because the check happens after skb_gso_segment(). In that case, we did have exclusive ownership of the skb and its associated conntrack entry. The elevated use count is due to skb_clone happening via skb_gso_segment(). Move the check so that its peformed vs. the aggregated packet. Then, annotate the individual segments except the first one so we can do a 2nd check at reinject time. For the normal case, where userspace does in-order reinjects, this avoids packet drops: first reinjected segment continues traversal and confirms entry, remaining segments observe the confirmed entry. While at it, simplify nf_ct_drop_unconfirmed(): We only care about unconfirmed entries with a refcnt > 1, there is no need to special-case dying entries. This only happens with UDP. With TCP, the only unconfirmed packet will be the TCP SYN, those aren't aggregated by GRO. Next patch adds a udpgro test case to cover this scenario.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Kernel bug in nfnetlink_queue/GSO handling causes unexpected packet drops for UDP traffic, enabling network DoS via crafted packets.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
No mitigating controls mapped yet. The per-CVE control annotator has not reached this CVE.