CVE-2026-31429

CVE Details

Release Date:	2026-04-20
Impact:	Moderate	What is this?

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: skb: fix cross-cache free of KFENCE-allocated skb head SKB_SMALL_HEAD_CACHE_SIZE is intentionally set to a non-power-of-2 value (e.g. 704 on x86_64) to avoid collisions with generic kmalloc bucket sizes. This ensures that skb_kfree_head() can reliably use skb_end_offset to distinguish skb heads allocated from skb_small_head_cache vs. generic kmalloc caches. However, when KFENCE is enabled, kfence_ksize() returns the exact requested allocation size instead of the slab bucket size. If a caller (e.g. bpf_test_init) allocates skb head data via kzalloc() and the requested size happens to equal SKB_SMALL_HEAD_CACHE_SIZE, then slab_build_skb() -> ksize() returns that exact value. After subtracting skb_shared_info overhead, skb_end_offset ends up matching SKB_SMALL_HEAD_HEADROOM, causing skb_kfree_head() to incorrectly free the object to skb_small_head_cache instead of back to the original kmalloc cache, resulting in a slab cross-cache free: kmem_cache_free(skbuff_small_head): Wrong slab cache. Expected skbuff_small_head but got kmalloc-1k Fix this by always calling kfree(head) in skb_kfree_head(). This keeps the free path generic and avoids allocator-specific misclassification for KFENCE objects.

See more information about CVE-2026-31429 from MITRE CVE dictionary and NIST NVD

NOTE: The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 metrics

Base Score:	6.6
Vector String:	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H
Version:	3.1
Attack Vector:	Local
Attack Complexity:	Low
Privileges Required:	Low
User Interaction:	None
Scope:	Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact:	Low
Integrity Impact:	Low
Availability Impact:	High

Errata information

Platform	Errata	Release Date
Oracle Linux version 10 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2026-50372	2026-07-02
Oracle Linux version 9 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2026-50372	2026-07-02