CVE-2026-43234 team: avoid NETDEV_CHANGEMTU event when unregistering slave

What is CVE-2026-43234?

CVE-2026-43234 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 May 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:

team: avoid NETDEV_CHANGEMTU event when unregistering slave

syzbot is reporting

unregister_netdevice: waiting for netdevsim0 to become free. Usage count = 3 ref_tracker: netdev@ffff88807dcf8618 has 1/2 users at __netdev_tracker_alloc include/linux/netdevice.h:4400 [inline] netdev_hold include/linux/netdevice.h:4429 [inline] inetdev_init+0x201/0x4e0 net/ipv4/devinet.c:286 inetdev_event+0x251/0x1610 net/ipv4/devinet.c:1600 notifier_call_chain+0x19d/0x3a0 kernel/notifier.c:85 call_netdevice_notifiers_mtu net/core/dev.c:2318 [inline] netif_set_mtu_ext+0x5aa/0x800 net/core/dev.c:9886 netif_set_mtu+0xd7/0x1b0 net/core/dev.c:9907 dev_set_mtu+0x126/0x260 net/core/dev_api.c:248 team_port_del+0xb07/0xcb0 drivers/net/team/team_core.c:1333 team_del_slave drivers/net/team/team_core.c:1936 [inline] team_device_event+0x207/0x5b0 drivers/net/team/team_core.c:2929 notifier_call_chain+0x19d/0x3a0 kernel/notifier.c:85 call_netdevice_notifiers_extack net/core/dev.c:2281 [inline] call_netdevice_notifiers net/core/dev.c:2295 [inline] __dev_change_net_namespace+0xcb7/0x2050 net/core/dev.c:12592 do_setlink+0x2ce/0x4590 net/core/rtnetlink.c:3060 rtnl_changelink net/core/rtnetlink.c:3776 [inline] __rtnl_newlink net/core/rtnetlink.c:3935 [inline] rtnl_newlink+0x15a9/0x1be0 net/core/rtnetlink.c:4072 rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x7d5/0xbe0 net/core/rtnetlink.c:6958 netlink_rcv_skb+0x232/0x4b0 net/netlink/af_netlink.c:2550 netlink_unicast_kernel net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1318 [inline] netlink_unicast+0x80f/0x9b0 net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1344 netlink_sendmsg+0x813/0xb40 net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1894

problem. Ido Schimmel found steps to reproduce

ip link add name team1 type team ip link add name dummy1 mtu 1499 master team1 type dummy ip netns add ns1 ip link set dev dummy1 netns ns1 ip -n ns1 link del dev dummy1

and also found that the same issue was fixed in the bond driver in commit f51048c3e07b ("bonding: avoid NETDEV_CHANGEMTU event when unregistering slave").

Let's do similar thing for the team driver, with commit ad7c7b2172c3 ("net: hold netdev instance lock during sysfs operations") and commit 303a8487a657 ("net: s/__dev_set_mtu/__netif_set_mtu/") also applied.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43234?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-43234?

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-2026-43234 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43234 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 AZL-85818, BELL-CVE-2026-43234, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43234, GHSA-fgqh-8xwq-c3jp, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-43234, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-43234 and 4 more.