GHSA-vc8f-29mh-24xvunknown

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipv4: reject undersized MTUs...

Published
September 4, 2026
Last Modified
September 4, 2026

🔗 CVE IDs covered (1)

📋 Description

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.

🔗 References (11)