CVE-2026-97939: ipmr: account multicast table and route memory

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: 2026-09-25 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipmr: account multicast table and route memory A netadmin in a user+net namespace can create many IPv4 and IPv6 multicast routing tables with MRT_TABLE and MRT6_TABLE. Each unseen id allocates an mr_table via the shared mr_table_alloc(), links it into the per-net list, and leaves it until netns teardown. Those objects were not charged to memcg, so the host unreclaimable slab grows with the table count. Account mr_table allocations with GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT and mark the IPv4/IPv6 MFC caches SLAB_ACCOUNT. This matches the established handling of IP addresses, routes and alternate interface names. Unresolved MFC entries are still allocated from softIRQ with GFP_ATOMIC and are not charged. They expire after 10 seconds and are bounded by the socket receive queue; see commit 0079ad8e8dc3 ("ipmr: remove hard code cache_resolve_queue_len limit").

Affected products

Linux: 2.6.35 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

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

References

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