Linux Kernel up to 6.18.15/6.19.5 TCP ovpn_tcp_recv buffer overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as critical has been identified in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.15/6.19.5. This affects the function ovpn_tcp_recv of the component TCP. The manipulation results in buffer overflow. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-43254. No exploit is available. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.15/6.19.5. Affected is the function ovpn_tcp_recv of the component TCP. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a buffer overflow vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-120. The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer, leading to a buffer overflow. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ovpn: tcp - fix packet extraction from stream When processing TCP stream data in ovpn_tcp_recv, we receive large cloned skbs from __strp_rcv that may contain multiple coalesced packets. The current implementation has two bugs: 1. Header offset overflow: Using pskb_pull with large offsets on coalesced skbs causes skb->data - skb->head to exceed the u16 storage of skb->network_header. This causes skb_reset_network_header to fail on the inner decapsulated packet, resulting in packet drops. 2. Unaligned protocol headers: Extracting packets from arbitrary positions within the coalesced TCP stream provides no alignment guarantees for the packet data causing performance penalties on architectures without efficient unaligned access. Additionally, openvpn's 2-byte length prefix on TCP packets causes the subsequent 4-byte opcode and packet ID fields to be inherently misaligned. Fix both issues by allocating a new skb for each openvpn packet and using skb_copy_bits to extract only the packet content into the new buffer, skipping the 2-byte length prefix. Also, check the length before invoking the function that performs the allocation to avoid creating an invalid skb. If the packet has to be forwarded to userspace the 2-byte prefix can be pushed to the head safely, without misalignment. As a side effect, this approach also avoids the expensive linearization that pskb_pull triggers on cloned skbs with page fragments. In testing, this resulted in TCP throughput improvements of up to 74%.

The advisory is shared for download at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-43254 since 05/01/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $5k-$25k (estimation calculated on 05/06/2026).

Upgrading to version 6.18.16 or 6.19.6 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 0315bec883c67fa1413c61e504a28dc5bd02eb37/7dba6cd7fb168d7615194a631c9c100c1c224131/d4f687fbbce45b5e88438e89b5e26c0c15847992 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.18.0
• 6.18.1
• 6.18.2
• 6.18.3
• 6.18.4
• 6.18.5
• 6.18.6
• 6.18.7
• 6.18.8
• 6.18.9
• 6.18.10
• 6.18.11
• 6.18.12
• 6.18.13
• 6.18.14
• 6.18.15
• 6.19.0
• 6.19.1
• 6.19.2
• 6.19.3
• 6.19.4
• 6.19.5

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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