Linux Kernel: act_ife metalist append bug leads to OOB
CVE-2026-23378 Published on March 25, 2026
net/sched: act_ife: Fix metalist update behavior
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: act_ife: Fix metalist update behavior
Whenever an ife action replace changes the metalist, instead of
replacing the old data on the metalist, the current ife code is appending
the new metadata. Aside from being innapropriate behavior, this may lead
to an unbounded addition of metadata to the metalist which might cause an
out of bounds error when running the encode op:
[ 138.423369][ C1] ==================================================================
[ 138.424317][ C1] BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168)
[ 138.424906][ C1] Write of size 4 at addr ffff8880077f4ffe by task ife_out_out_bou/255
[ 138.425778][ C1] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 255 Comm: ife_out_out_bou Not tainted 7.0.0-rc1-00169-gfbdfa8da05b6 #624 PREEMPT(full)
[ 138.425795][ C1] Hardware name: Bochs Bochs, BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011
[ 138.425800][ C1] Call Trace:
[ 138.425804][ C1] <IRQ>
[ 138.425808][ C1] dump_stack_lvl (lib/dump_stack.c:122)
[ 138.425828][ C1] print_report (mm/kasan/report.c:379 mm/kasan/report.c:482)
[ 138.425839][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221)
[ 138.425844][ C1] ? __virt_addr_valid (./arch/x86/include/asm/preempt.h:95 (discriminator 1) ./include/linux/rcupdate.h:975 (discriminator 1) ./include/linux/mmzone.h:2207 (discriminator 1) arch/x86/mm/physaddr.c:54 (discriminator 1))
[ 138.425853][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168)
[ 138.425859][ C1] kasan_report (mm/kasan/report.c:221 mm/kasan/report.c:597)
[ 138.425868][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168)
[ 138.425878][ C1] kasan_check_range (mm/kasan/generic.c:186 (discriminator 1) mm/kasan/generic.c:200 (discriminator 1))
[ 138.425884][ C1] __asan_memset (mm/kasan/shadow.c:84 (discriminator 2))
[ 138.425889][ C1] ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:168)
[ 138.425893][ C1] ? ife_tlv_meta_encode (net/ife/ife.c:171)
[ 138.425898][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221)
[ 138.425903][ C1] ife_encode_meta_u16 (net/sched/act_ife.c:57)
[ 138.425910][ C1] ? __pfx_do_raw_spin_lock (kernel/locking/spinlock_debug.c:114)
[ 138.425916][ C1] ? __asan_memcpy (mm/kasan/shadow.c:105 (discriminator 3))
[ 138.425921][ C1] ? __pfx_ife_encode_meta_u16 (net/sched/act_ife.c:45)
[ 138.425927][ C1] ? srso_alias_return_thunk (arch/x86/lib/retpoline.S:221)
[ 138.425931][ C1] tcf_ife_act (net/sched/act_ife.c:847 net/sched/act_ife.c:879)
To solve this issue, fix the replace behavior by adding the metalist to
the ife rcu data structure.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-23378
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Affected Versions
Linux:- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below 56ade7ddea6ce605552341785d08e365c3f61861 is affected.
- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below 5b1449301ca070814d866990b46f48d3f39ea4ee is affected.
- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below 91a89d3bdc2f63d983adc13d1771631663c5dc1b is affected.
- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below cd888c3966672239f2e0707b846a5a936ac9038a is affected.
- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below 691866c4cca54dc4df762276b49e89b36e046947 is affected.
- Version aa9fd9a325d51fa0b11153b03b8fefff569fa955 and below e2cedd400c3ec0302ffca2490e8751772906ac23 is affected.
- Version 4.15 is affected.
- Before 4.15 is unaffected.
- Version 6.1.167, <= 6.1.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.6.130, <= 6.6.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.12.77, <= 6.12.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.18.17, <= 6.18.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.19.7, <= 6.19.* is unaffected.
- Version 7.0-rc3, <= * is unaffected.