Updated: 2026-01-10 00:57:09.923239
Description:
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: openvswitch: reject negative ifindex Recent changes in net-next (commit 759ab1edb56c ("net: store netdevs in an xarray")) refactored the handling of pre-assigned ifindexes and let syzbot surface a latent problem in ovs. ovs does not validate ifindex, making it possible to create netdev ports with negative ifindex values. It's easy to repro with YNL: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_datapath.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": 1, "name":"my-dp"}' $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' $ ip link show -65536: some-port0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 7a:48:21:ad:0b:fb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff ... Validate the inputs. Now the second command correctly returns: $ ./cli.py --spec netlink/specs/ovs_vport.yaml \ --do new \ --json '{"upcall-pid": "00000001", "name": "some-port0", "dp-ifindex":3,"ifindex":4294901760,"type":2}' lib.ynl.NlError: Netlink error: Numerical result out of range nl_len = 108 (92) nl_flags = 0x300 nl_type = 2 error: -34extack: {'msg': 'integer out of range', 'unknown': [[type:4 len:36] b'\x0c\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x0c\x00\x03\x00\xff\xff\xff\x7f\x00\x00\x00\x00\x08\x00\x01\x00\x08\x00\x00\x00'], 'bad-attr': '.ifindex'} Accept 0 since it used to be silently ignored.
| Links | NIST | CIRCL | RHEL | Ubuntu |
| Severity | Score | |
|---|---|---|
| CVSS Version 2.x | NONE | 0.0 |
| CVSS Version 3.x | MEDIUM | 5.1 |
| OS name | Project name | Version | Score | Severity | Status | Errata | Last updated | Statement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU | kernel | 5.14.0 | 5.1 | MEDIUM | Released | CLSA-2026:1767864313 | 2026-01-08 16:46:41 | |
| CentOS 8.4 ELS | kernel | 4.18.0 | 5.1 | MEDIUM | Not Vulnerable | 2026-01-06 09:35:09 | ||
| CentOS 8.5 ELS | kernel | 4.18.0 | 5.1 | MEDIUM | Not Vulnerable | 2026-01-06 09:35:09 |