CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98801

Low risk· EPSS 6%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.17%

6th percentile - higher than 6% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's handling of the SO_RESERVE_MEM socket option has been fixed. The option was accepted on both TCP and UDP sockets even though the memory reservation mechanism is only supported by TCP, which could corrupt sk_forward_alloc and memcg accounting on UDP sockets. Additionally, the lack of an upper bound allowed values near INT_MAX to overflow 32-bit signed counters.

Risk Assessment

A local user able to call setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM) on a UDP socket can corrupt socket memory state and memcg accounting, potentially leading to system instability or privilege escalation. Values near INT_MAX cause counter overflow and further corruption of internal kernel structures.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that restricts SO_RESERVE_MEM to TCP sockets and rejects values greater than SZ_1G with -EINVAL. Until the update is applied, restrict unprivileged users from invoking setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM).

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: restrict SO_RESERVE_MEM to TCP sockets and cap max value Commit 2bb2f5fb21b0 ("net: add new socket option SO_RESERVE_MEM") and commit d00c8ee31729 ("net: fix possible NULL deref in sock_reserve_memory") only checked sk_has_account(sk), which is true for both TCP and UDP sockets. However, SO_RESERVE_MEM and sk_unused_reserved_mem() are currently only supported by TCP: - On UDP sockets, sk->sk_forward_alloc is protected by sk->sk_receive_queue.lock, whereas sock_reserve_memory() and sock_release_reserved_memory() only acquire lock_sock(sk). Concurrent UDP packet reception/release and setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM) corrupt sk_forward_alloc and memcg accounting. - udp_rmem_release() reclaims excess sk_forward_alloc without accounting for sk_unused_reserved_mem(sk). Restrict sock_reserve_memory() to TCP sockets (sk_is_tcp(sk)) for now. Supporting SO_RESERVE_MEM for UDP (acquiring sk_receive_queue.lock and honoring sk_unused_reserved_mem() in udp_rmem_release()) can be done in a future net-next series if needed. In addition, reject val > SZ_1G with -EINVAL in sk_setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM). Without an upper bound, values near INT_MAX cause sk_mem_pages(delta) and (pages << PAGE_SHIFT) to overflow 32-bit signed int, corrupting sk->sk_forward_alloc and sk->sk_reserved_mem. Using a page-aligned cap (SZ_1G) ensures that the page-rounded sk->sk_reserved_mem reported by getsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM) can always be passed back to setsockopt(SO_RESERVE_MEM).

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS