Linux Kernel RedBoot PT Table Parser Buffer Overflow via memcmp
CVE-2026-23474 Published on April 3, 2026
mtd: Avoid boot crash in RedBoot partition table parser
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mtd: Avoid boot crash in RedBoot partition table parser
Given CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE=y and a recent compiler,
commit 439a1bcac648 ("fortify: Use __builtin_dynamic_object_size() when
available") produces the warning below and an oops.
Searching for RedBoot partition table in 50000000.flash at offset 0x7e0000
------------[ cut here ]------------
WARNING: lib/string_helpers.c:1035 at 0xc029e04c, CPU#0: swapper/0/1
memcmp: detected buffer overflow: 15 byte read of buffer size 14
Modules linked in:
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.19.0 #1 NONE
As Kees said, "'names' is pointing to the final 'namelen' many bytes
of the allocation ... 'namelen' could be basically any length at all.
This fortify warning looks legit to me -- this code used to be reading
beyond the end of the allocation."
Since the size of the dynamic allocation is calculated with strlen()
we can use strcmp() instead of memcmp() and remain within bounds.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-23474
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Affected Versions
Linux:- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below 0b08be5aca212a99f8ba786fee4922feac08002c is affected.
- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below d8570211a2b1ec886a462daa0be4e9983ac768bb is affected.
- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below 2025b2d1f9d5cad6ea6fe85654c6c41297c3130b is affected.
- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below c4054ad2d8bff4e8e937cd4a1d1a04c1e8f77a2c is affected.
- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below 75a4d8cfe7784f909b3bd69325abac8e04ecb385 is affected.
- Version 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and below 8e2f8020270af7777d49c2e7132260983e4fc566 is affected.
- Version 2.6.12 is affected.
- Before 2.6.12 is unaffected.
- Version 6.1.167, <= 6.1.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.6.130, <= 6.6.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.12.78, <= 6.12.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.18.20, <= 6.18.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.19.10, <= 6.19.* is unaffected.
- Version 7.0-rc5, <= * is unaffected.