CVE-2026-23064 net/sched: act_ife: avoid possible NULL deref

Medium 5.5 Published 4 Feb 2026 Updated 11 May 2026

A NULL pointer dereference in the Linux kernel's IFE action allows local attackers to cause a system crash via crafted network packets.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2026-23064?

CVE-2026-23064 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 4 Feb 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/sched: act_ife: avoid possible NULL deref

tcf_ife_encode() must make sure ife_encode() does not return NULL.

syzbot reported:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] RIP: 0010:ife_tlv_meta_encode+0x41/0xa0 net/ife/ife.c:166 CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 8990 Comm: syz.0.696 Not tainted syzkaller #0 PREEMPT(full) Call Trace: <TASK> ife_encode_meta_u32+0x153/0x180 net/sched/act_ife.c:101 tcf_ife_encode net/sched/act_ife.c:841 [inline] tcf_ife_act+0x1022/0x1de0 net/sched/act_ife.c:877 tc_act include/net/tc_wrapper.h:130 [inline] tcf_action_exec+0x1c0/0xa20 net/sched/act_api.c:1152 tcf_exts_exec include/net/pkt_cls.h:349 [inline] mall_classify+0x1a0/0x2a0 net/sched/cls_matchall.c:42 tc_classify include/net/tc_wrapper.h:197 [inline] __tcf_classify net/sched/cls_api.c:1764 [inline] tcf_classify+0x7f2/0x1380 net/sched/cls_api.c:1860 multiq_classify net/sched/sch_multiq.c:39 [inline] multiq_enqueue+0xe0/0x510 net/sched/sch_multiq.c:66 dev_qdisc_enqueue+0x45/0x250 net/core/dev.c:4147 __dev_xmit_skb net/core/dev.c:4262 [inline] __dev_queue_xmit+0x2998/0x46c0 net/core/dev.c:4798

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-23064?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-23064?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-23064 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-23064 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-23064, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23064, GHSA-949x-gvhg-pggc, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-23064, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-23064, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-23064.