What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-72296: net: ife: require ETH_HLEN to be pullable in ife_decode()

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-15 · updated 2026-10-16

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: ife: require ETH_HLEN to be pullable in ife_decode() ife decode may return after making only the outer IFE header and metadata pullable. The caller then passes the decapsulated packet to eth_type_trans(), which expects the inner Ethernet header to be accessible from the linear data area. With a malformed IFE frame, the inner Ethernet header may still be shorter than ETH_HLEN in the linear area, which can lead to a crash in the original code. Fix this by extending the pull check in ife_decode() so that the inner Ethernet header is also guaranteed to be pullable before returning.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 4.6 — fixed in 7.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1cb42ec10294a55380e52e674b3df2b962648242
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5526d1997aea6c9bd865ca4d4894b52e799d735c
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/70013f9163bef7fbd9fa62f81cf91b2a7ba66163
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8c8818e52fddb247ff3214622401a4de6ff8482e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9406f6012b7343661efb516a11c62d4db2b62f75
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9433578bff9c100c466a6354574892e55293cb8f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b69ad768cd4a2ef4e07c18492ae85438ed17c7cb
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be272e159dfe1207b67332ad6e17adcf59b4ea4b

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