CVE-2026-74620
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: act_gact, act_police: range check the fallback control action tcf_action_check_ctrlact() range checks the primary control action: if (!opcode) ret = action > TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX ? -EINVAL : 0; TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX is TC_ACT_TRAP, so kernel-internal verdicts above it cannot be set that way. But act_gact and act_police each carry a second, independent control action supplied by user space that never reaches that helper - TCA_GACT_PROB.paction and TCA_POLICE_RESULT. Both only reject TC_ACT_GOTO_CHAIN, so any other value is stored verbatim and returned verbatim from the action. In particular user space can store TC_ACT_CONSUMED, which is TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX + 1 and is deliberately not part of the UAPI value range. That verdict tells every caller the action took ownership of the skb, so nobody frees it: sch_handle_ingress(), sch_handle_egress() and tcf_qevent_handle() all deliberately skip the free for it. The result is one leaked sk_buff plus its data buffer per packet traversing the filter, unbounded, for all traffic on the chain including kernel-generated packets. Both are trivially deterministic. act_gact clamps tcfg_pval to >= 1, so with pval = 1 gact_determ() returns the fallback for every packet. act_police has no mandatory rate, so rate = 0 leaves tcfp_mtu = ~0 and tcf_police_mtu_check() always passes. TC_ACT_CONSUMED was added by commit 720f22fed81b ("net: sched: refactor reinsert action"), after both goto-chain guards were written: commit 9469f375ab09 ("net/sched: act_gact: disallow 'goto chain' on fallback control action") and commit c08f5ed5d625 ("net/sched: act_police: disallow 'goto chain' on fallback control action"). Neither guard was widened when the new verdict appeared. Factor the existing range test out of tcf_action_check_ctrlact() as tcf_action_valid() and apply it to both fallbacks. The helper cannot call tcf_action_check_ctrlact() directly because that also allocates a goto_chain, which is exactly what these two sites must not do. Reproduced on v7.2-rc6: kmemleak reports one leaked 232-byte skbuff_head_cache object plus its 704-byte data buffer per packet. With this patch both configurations are rejected with -EINVAL and kmemleak reports none.
Affected versions
Linux kernel versions
5.3
and later are affected. Fixed in
5.15.216,
6.1.183,
6.6.152,
6.12.104,
6.18.45,
7.1.9,
7.2
and their respective stable series.
References
7 totalFrequently asked questions
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What is CVE-2026-74620?
CVE-2026-74620 is a unscored severity Linux kernel vulnerability . It affects Linux kernel versions from 5.3 onward and has been patched in 5.15.216, 6.1.183, 6.6.152 and others. CVE-2026-74620 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
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Is there a patch available for CVE-2026-74620?
Yes. CVE-2026-74620 has been patched. Fixed versions include 5.15.216, 6.1.183, 6.6.152 and others. If you are running Linux kernel 5.3 or later up to the fix versions, apply the relevant patch for your kernel branch.
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Is CVE-2026-74620 actively exploited?
No. CVE-2026-74620 has not been confirmed as actively exploited. It is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.