# CVE-2026-53208: Bluetooth: L2CAP: reject BR/EDR signaling packets over MTUsig

> A remote Bluetooth peer can cause excessive resource consumption and potential denial of service by sending oversized signaling packets containing multiple echo requests.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 25 Jun 2026
- **Updated:** 15 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-90401, BELL-CVE-2026-53208, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53208, GHSA-hhxp-r7j7-v7jv, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-53208, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-53208, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-53208, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-53208, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53208

## What is CVE-2026-53208?

CVE-2026-53208 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Jun 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:

Bluetooth: L2CAP: reject BR/EDR signaling packets over MTUsig

net/bluetooth/l2cap_core.c:l2cap_sig_channel() accepts BR/EDR
signaling packets up to the channel MTU and dispatches each command
without enforcing the signaling MTU (MTUsig). A Bluetooth BR/EDR peer
within radio range can send a fixed-channel CID 0x0001 packet that is
larger than MTUsig and contains many L2CAP_ECHO_REQ commands before
pairing. In a real-radio stock-kernel run, one 681-byte signaling
packet containing 168 zero-length ECHO_REQ commands made the target
transmit 168 ECHO_RSP frames over about 220 ms.

Impact: a Bluetooth BR/EDR peer within radio range, before pairing, can
force 168 ECHO_RSP frames from one 681-byte fixed-channel signaling
packet containing packed ECHO_REQ commands.

Define Linux's BR/EDR signaling MTU as the spec minimum of 48 bytes and
reject any larger signaling packet with one L2CAP_COMMAND_REJECT_RSP
carrying L2CAP_REJ_MTU_EXCEEDED before any command is dispatched.

The Bluetooth Core spec wording for MTUExceeded says the reject
identifier shall match the first request command in the packet, and
that packets containing only responses shall be silently discarded.
Linux intentionally deviates from that prescription: silently
discarding desynchronizes the peer because the remote stack never
learns its responses were dropped, and locating the first request
command requires walking command headers past MTUsig, i.e. processing
bytes from a packet we have already decided is too large to process.
We therefore always emit one reject and use the identifier from the
first command header, a single fixed-offset byte read.

The unrestricted BR/EDR signaling parser and ECHO_REQ response path both
trace to the initial git import; no later introducing commit is
available for a Fixes tag.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-53208?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-53208?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-53208 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-53208 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-2026-53208 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-53208 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Jun 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-53208 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-2026-53208/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53208/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-53208
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-53208
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-53208

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53208/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.