CVE-2011-1478

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.7 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2011-10-23 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

The napi_reuse_skb function in net/core/dev.c in the Generic Receive Offload (GRO) implementation in the Linux kernel before 2.6.38 does not reset the values of certain structure members, which might allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference) via a malformed VLAN frame.

Affected products

Linux kernel: before 2.6.38 — fixed in 2.6.38

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 2.6.38. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=66c46d741e2e60f0e8b625b80edb0ab820c46d7a
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=6d152e23ad1a7a5b40fef1f42e017d66e6115159
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.38
http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2011/03/28/1
http://secunia.com/advisories/46397
http://securityreason.com/securityalert/8480
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/520102/100/0/threaded
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2011-0012.html
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691270
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=66c46d741e2e60f0e8b625b80edb0ab820c46d7a
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=6d152e23ad1a7a5b40fef1f42e017d66e6115159
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.38

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