CVE-2026-90083net/sched: act_ife: Only operate on Ethernet frames

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: act_ife: Only operate on Ethernet frames act_ife encapsulates/decapsulates the original Ethernet header and uses skb->dev->hard_header_len as the length of that header. That is only correct for Ethernet devices: on a device where hard_header_len does not match the L2 header that was actually pulled (PPP reports PPP_HDRLEN while nothing is stripped on ingress), the ingress skb_push()/skb_pull() use the wrong length and can hit skb_under_panic when headroom is tight. IFE is Ethernet-only by design - it builds an outer ethhdr, rewrites h_source/h_dest/h_proto, and calls eth_type_trans() on decode - so instead of trying to make the offsets work for arbitrary link types, simply drop packets that do not carry an Ethernet header. Checking skb->dev->type alone is not enough. We have to cater for a corner case where mirred can redirect an skb from a non-Ethernet device to an Ethernet one, and skb->dev then says nothing about the framing the skb actually has: an skb redirected from ppp0 reaches the target's ingress hook with mac_len 0 and no Ethernet header at all. So at ingress also require mac_len to be ETH_HLEN. On egress mac_len is not maintained, so the device type is all we have; a bogus redirect there yields a malformed frame rather than an out-of-bounds push, and it would be malformed with or without IFE. That corner case is not theoretical - redirecting from ppp0 into a veth that has an ife encode action on its ingress hook panics without this patch: skbuff: skb_under_panic: len:98 put:14 head:ffff88800e410000 data:ffff88800e40fff5 tail:0x57 end:0x640 dev:veth3 kernel BUG at net/core/skbuff.c:214! Call Trace: skb_push (net/core/skbuff.c:224 net/core/skbuff.c:2657) tcf_ife_act (net/sched/act_ife.c:829 net/sched/act_ife.c:874) tc_run (net/core/dev.c:4463) netif_receive_skb (net/core/dev.c:6463 net/core/dev.c:6522) tcf_mirred_to_dev (net/sched/act_mirred.c:248 net/sched/act_mirred.c:328) tcf_mirred_act (net/sched/act_mirred.c:489) tc_run (net/core/dev.c:4463) process_backlog (net/core/dev.c:6728) With Ethernet framing guaranteed, use ETH_HLEN instead of hard_header_len.

Timeline

Scores

No CVSS score yet: neither the CNA, CISA nor NVD has scored this CVE. NVD status: Received.

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.22% · top 87% of all CVEs (15 Nov 2026)

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Not scored.

Affected products

• Linux · Linux

  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < 3c07621770b04f19b67e3af4a24b4d447826fbdd
  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < b951dd2fd5ede007474fc134ecb5639e1f86f5de
  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < 13dddf87a1f89557920f9b437a21ea0b7225f828
  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < d218ea7df6eba076171f2d4897a429a31f2139f0
  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < 138b0054021fd7d57bc3eb68b3f4e2bcec037849
  • affected 295a6e06d21e1f469c9f38b00125a13b60ad4e7c – < 5b483f7791b079bb97d411f1066652ff659207ff

• Linux · Linux

  • affected 4.11
  • unaffected < 4.11
  • unaffected 6.1.191 – ≤ 6.1.*
  • unaffected 6.6.160 – ≤ 6.6.*
  • unaffected 6.12.114 – ≤ 6.12.*
  • unaffected 6.18.52 – ≤ 6.18.*
  • unaffected 7.2.6 – ≤ 7.2.*
  • unaffected 7.3 – ≤ *

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• EUVD EUVD-2026-81944 (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2026-90083](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2026-90083.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-90083)

Record last updated 30 Oct 2026, 12:34 UTC.