CVE-2026-43445 e1000/e1000e: Fix leak in DMA error cleanup
A memory leak in the e1000/e1000e network driver can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service when DMA mapping errors occur.
- 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-2026-43445?
CVE-2026-43445 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 8 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:
e1000/e1000e: Fix leak in DMA error cleanup
If an error is encountered while mapping TX buffers, the driver should unmap any buffers already mapped for that skb.
Because count is incremented after a successful mapping, it will always match the correct number of unmappings needed when dma_error is reached. Decrementing count before the while loop in dma_error causes an off-by-one error. If any mapping was successful before an unsuccessful mapping, exactly one DMA mapping would leak.
In these commits, a faulty while condition caused an infinite loop in dma_error: Commit 03b1320dfcee ("e1000e: remove use of skb_dma_map from e1000e driver") Commit 602c0554d7b0 ("e1000: remove use of skb_dma_map from e1000 driver")
Commit c1fa347f20f1 ("e1000/e1000e/igb/igbvf/ixgb/ixgbe: Fix tests of unsigned in *_tx_map()") fixed the infinite loop, but introduced the off-by-one error.
This issue may still exist in the igbvf driver, but I did not address it in this patch.
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43445?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-43445?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2026-43445 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43445 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-43445, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43445, GHSA-fg4c-9xcm-vp9q, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-43445, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-43445, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-43445 and 1 more.