# CVE-2026-43194: net: consume xmit errors of GSO frames > A flaw in Linux kernel TCP handling causes connections to stall indefinitely when GSO frames encounter transmission errors, leading to denial of service. - **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`) - **Exploited in the wild:** Not known - **Login needed:** Not needed - **Attackable:** Over the internet - **Victim action needed:** Not needed - **Fix available:** Yes - **Published:** 6 May 2026 - **Updated:** 19 Oct 2026 - **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2026-43194, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43194, GHSA-6g7r-xrvq-rpc8, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-43194, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-43194, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-43194, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43194 ## What is CVE-2026-43194? CVE-2026-43194 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 May 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim. ### Official description In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: consume xmit errors of GSO frames udpgro_frglist.sh and udpgro_bench.sh are the flakiest tests currently in NIPA. They fail in the same exact way, TCP GRO test stalls occasionally and the test gets killed after 10min. These tests use veth to simulate GRO. They attach a trivial ("return XDP_PASS;") XDP program to the veth to force TSO off and NAPI on. Digging into the failure mode we can see that the connection is completely stuck after a burst of drops. The sender's snd_nxt is at sequence number N [1], but the receiver claims to have received (rcv_nxt) up to N + 3 * MSS [2]. Last piece of the puzzle is that senders rtx queue is not empty (let's say the block in the rtx queue is at sequence number N - 4 * MSS [3]). In this state, sender sends a retransmission from the rtx queue with a single segment, and sequence numbers N-4*MSS:N-3*MSS [3]. Receiver sees it and responds with an ACK all the way up to N + 3 * MSS [2]. But sender will reject this ack as TCP_ACK_UNSENT_DATA because it has no recollection of ever sending data that far out [1]. And we are stuck. The root cause is the mess of the xmit return codes. veth returns an error when it can't xmit a frame. We end up with a loss event like this: ------------------------------------------------- | GSO super frame 1 | GSO super frame 2 | |-----------------------------------------------| | seg | seg | seg | seg | seg | seg | seg | seg | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | ------------------------------------------------- x ok ok | ok ok ok \\ snd_nxt "x" means packet lost by veth, and "ok" means it went thru. Since veth has TSO disabled in this test it sees individual segments. Segment 1 is on the retransmit queue and will be resent. So why did the sender not advance snd_nxt even tho it clearly did send up to seg 8? tcp_write_xmit() interprets the return code from the core to mean that data has not been sent at all. Since TCP deals with GSO super frames, not individual segment the crux of the problem is that loss of a single segment can be interpreted as loss of all. TCP only sees the last return code for the last segment of the GSO frame (in <> brackets in the diagram above). Of course for the problem to occur we need a setup or a device without a Qdisc. Otherwise Qdisc layer disconnects the protocol layer from the device errors completely. We have multiple ways to fix this. 1) make veth not return an error when it lost a packet. While this is what I think we did in the past, the issue keeps reappearing and it's annoying to debug. The game of whack a mole is not great. 2) fix the damn return codes We only talk about NETDEV_TX_OK and NETDEV_TX_BUSY in the documentation, so maybe we should make the return code from ndo_start_xmit() a boolean. I like that the most, but perhaps some ancient, not-really-networking protocol would suffer. 3) make TCP ignore the errors It is not entirely clear to me what benefit TCP gets from interpreting the result of ip_queue_xmit()? Specifically once the connection is established and we're pushing data - packet loss is just packet loss? 4) this fix Ignore the rc in the Qdisc-less+GSO case, since it's unreliable. We already always return OK in the TCQ_F_CAN_BYPASS case. In the Qdisc-less case let's be a bit more conservative and only mask the GSO errors. This path is taken by non-IP-"networks" like CAN, MCTP etc, so we could regress some ancient thing. This is the simplest, but also maybe the hackiest fix? Similar fix has been proposed by Eric in the past but never committed because original reporter was working with an OOT driver and wasn't providing feedback (see Link). Weakness: CWE-754 (Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions) ## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43194? It affects 1 product. Products: Linux kernel. ## How do I fix CVE-2026-43194? Apply the vendor's patch. ## Is CVE-2026-43194 being exploited? There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43194 in the wild and no public exploit code. ## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel - [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild) - [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild) - [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild) - [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild) - [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild) ## Fix prompt for AI coding agents ```text Check this codebase for CVE-2026-43194 and fix it if it is affected. What it is: CVE-2026-43194 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 May 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim. Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43194 in the wild and no public exploit code. Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page. Task: 1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies. 2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it. 3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead. 4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why. 5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing. Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-43194/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-43194/index.md) ``` ## Sources - CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-43194 - NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-43194 - OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-43194 --- From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-43194/ Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.