CVE-2026-80839: batman-adv: reject unrepresentable multicast TVLV offsets

Severity: unknown
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-04 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: batman-adv: reject unrepresentable multicast TVLV offsets The network and transport header fields in struct sk_buff are 16-bit offsets from skb->head, and U16_MAX is reserved as the unset transport header value. batadv_tvlv_call_handler() sets both fields from a received multicast TVLV without checking whether the TVLV end is representable. If the end offset exceeds the field's range, skb_set_transport_header() truncates it so that the transport header precedes the network header. The negative difference is then returned by skb_network_header_len() as a large u32. batadv_mcast_forw_packet() consequently accepts an oversized multicast tracker and accesses memory beyond the skb data. Add skb_set_transport_header_careful(), an offset-aware counterpart to skb_reset_transport_header_careful(), which validates the final head-relative offset before assigning it. Use the new helper in batadv_tvlv_call_handler() and reject unrepresentable TVLVs before setting the network header.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 6.8 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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