CVE-2026-43226 net/rds: No shortcut out of RDS_CONN_ERROR

What is CVE-2026-43226?

CVE-2026-43226 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/rds: No shortcut out of RDS_CONN_ERROR

RDS connections carry a state "rds_conn_path::cp_state" and transitions from one state to another and are conditional upon an expected state: "rds_conn_path_transition."

There is one exception to this conditionality, which is "RDS_CONN_ERROR" that can be enforced by "rds_conn_path_drop" regardless of what state the condition is currently in.

But as soon as a connection enters state "RDS_CONN_ERROR", the connection handling code expects it to go through the shutdown-path.

The RDS/TCP multipath changes added a shortcut out of "RDS_CONN_ERROR" straight back to "RDS_CONN_CONNECTING" via "rds_tcp_accept_one_path" (e.g. after "rds_tcp_state_change").

A subsequent "rds_tcp_reset_callbacks" can then transition the state to "RDS_CONN_RESETTING" with a shutdown-worker queued.

That'll trip up "rds_conn_init_shutdown", which was never adjusted to handle "RDS_CONN_RESETTING" and subsequently drops the connection with the dreaded "DR_INV_CONN_STATE", which leaves "RDS_SHUTDOWN_WORK_QUEUED" on forever.

So we do two things here:

a) Don't shortcut "RDS_CONN_ERROR", but take the longer path through the shutdown code.

b) Add "RDS_CONN_RESETTING" to the expected states in "rds_conn_init_shutdown" so that we won't error out and get stuck, if we ever hit weird state transitions like this again."

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43226?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-43226?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2026-43226 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43226 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-43226, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43226, GHSA-mjj8-gm8f-325h, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-43226, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-43226, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-43226 and 1 more.