5.5

CVE-2026-23086

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

vsock/virtio: cap TX credit to local buffer size

The virtio transports derives its TX credit directly from peer_buf_alloc,
which is set from the remote endpoint's SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE value.

On the host side this means that the amount of data we are willing to
queue for a connection is scaled by a guest-chosen buffer size, rather
than the host's own vsock configuration. A malicious guest can advertise
a large buffer and read slowly, causing the host to allocate a
correspondingly large amount of sk_buff memory.
The same thing would happen in the guest with a malicious host, since
virtio transports share the same code base.

Introduce a small helper, virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(), that
returns min(peer_buf_alloc, buf_alloc), and use it wherever we consume
peer_buf_alloc.

This ensures the effective TX window is bounded by both the peer's
advertised buffer and our own buf_alloc (already clamped to
buffer_max_size via SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_MAX_SIZE), so a remote peer
cannot force the other to queue more data than allowed by its own
vsock settings.

On an unpatched Ubuntu 22.04 host (~64 GiB RAM), running a PoC with
32 guest vsock connections advertising 2 GiB each and reading slowly
drove Slab/SUnreclaim from ~0.5 GiB to ~57 GiB; the system only
recovered after killing the QEMU process. That said, if QEMU memory is
limited with cgroups, the maximum memory used will be limited.

With this patch applied:

  Before:
    MemFree:        ~61.6 GiB
    Slab:           ~142 MiB
    SUnreclaim:     ~117 MiB

  After 32 high-credit connections:
    MemFree:        ~61.5 GiB
    Slab:           ~178 MiB
    SUnreclaim:     ~152 MiB

Only ~35 MiB increase in Slab/SUnreclaim, no host OOM, and the guest
remains responsive.

Compatibility with non-virtio transports:

  - VMCI uses the AF_VSOCK buffer knobs to size its queue pairs per
    socket based on the local vsk->buffer_* values; the remote side
    cannot enlarge those queues beyond what the local endpoint
    configured.

  - Hyper-V's vsock transport uses fixed-size VMBus ring buffers and
    an MTU bound; there is no peer-controlled credit field comparable
    to peer_buf_alloc, and the remote endpoint cannot drive in-flight
    kernel memory above those ring sizes.

  - The loopback path reuses virtio_transport_common.c, so it
    naturally follows the same semantics as the virtio transport.

This change is limited to virtio_transport_common.c and thus affects
virtio-vsock, vhost-vsock, and loopback, bringing them in line with the
"remote window intersected with local policy" behaviour that VMCI and
Hyper-V already effectively have.

[Stefano: small adjustments after changing the previous patch]
[Stefano: tweak the commit message]
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LinuxLinux Kernel Version >= 4.8 < 6.1.162
LinuxLinux Kernel Version >= 6.2 < 6.6.122
LinuxLinux Kernel Version >= 6.7 < 6.12.68
LinuxLinux Kernel Version >= 6.13 < 6.18.8
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc1
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc2
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc3
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc4
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc5
LinuxLinux Kernel Version6.19 Updaterc6
Zu dieser CVE wurde keine CISA KEV oder CERT.AT-Warnung gefunden.
EPSS Metriken
Typ Quelle Score Percentile
EPSS FIRST.org 0.02% 0.029
CVSS Metriken
Quelle Base Score Exploit Score Impact Score Vector String
nvd@nist.gov 5.5 1.8 3.6
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Es wurden noch keine Informationen zu CWE veröffentlicht.