CVE-2026-74752: sctp: validate cookie AUTH state before use

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-08-26 · updated 2026-10-21

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sctp: validate cookie AUTH state before use When cookie authentication is disabled, COOKIE_ECHO restores fixed-size AUTH fields directly from peer-controlled cookie bytes. A forged RANDOM length, HMAC list, or CHUNKS list can then reach association consumers with lengths or identifiers that were never validated against the local backing arrays. A forged RANDOM length can cause out-of-bounds reads during key-vector construction. A forged HMAC identifier also caused a 32-byte write past a zero-length AUTH chunk, providing a primitive for a local privilege escalation chain. Validate the cookie's RANDOM, HMACS, and CHUNKS parameters at the cookie trust boundary before copying them into the association. Reject invalid types, malformed lengths, unsupported HMAC identifiers, HMAC lists without SHA1, and forbidden chunk ids.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 2.6.24 — fixed in 7.2

How to fix

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

References

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