CVE-2026-63981 net/sched: act_mirred: Fix blockcast recursion bypass leading to stack overflow
An unprivileged user can trigger a kernel stack overflow via TC mirred blockcast recursion, causing a system crash.
- 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-2026-63981?
CVE-2026-63981 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 19 Jul 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:
net/sched: act_mirred: Fix blockcast recursion bypass leading to stack overflow
tcf_mirred_act() checks sched_mirred_nest against MIRRED_NEST_LIMIT (4) to prevent deep recursion. However, when the action uses blockcast (tcfm_blockid != 0), the function returns at the tcf_blockcast() call BEFORE reaching the counter increment. As a result, the recursion counter never advances and the limit check is entirely bypassed.
When two devices share a TC egress block with a mirred blockcast rule, a packet egressing on device A is mirrored to device B via blockcast; device B's egress TC re-enters tcf_mirred_act() via blockcast and mirrors back to A, creating an unbounded recursion loop:
tcf_mirred_act -> tcf_blockcast -> tcf_mirred_to_dev -> dev_queue_xmit -> sch_handle_egress -> tcf_classify -> tcf_mirred_act -> (repeat)
This recursion continues until the kernel stack overflows.
The bug is reachable from an unprivileged user via unshare(CLONE_NEWUSER | CLONE_NEWNET): user namespaces grant CAP_NET_ADMIN in the new network namespace, which is sufficient to create dummy devices, attach clsact qdiscs with shared blocks, and install mirred blockcast filters.
BUG: TASK stack guard page was hit at ffffc90000b7fff8 Oops: stack guard page: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 2 UID: 1000 PID: 169 Comm: poc Not tainted 7.0.0-rc7-next-20260410 RIP: 0010:xas_find+0x17/0x480 Call Trace: xa_find+0x17b/0x1d0 tcf_mirred_act+0x640/0x1060 tcf_action_exec+0x400/0x530 basic_classify+0x128/0x1d0 tcf_classify+0xd83/0x1150 tc_run+0x328/0x620 __dev_queue_xmit+0x797/0x3100 tcf_mirred_to_dev+0x7b1/0xf70 tcf_mirred_act+0x68a/0x1060 [repeating ~30+ times until stack overflow] Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt
Fix this by incrementing sched_mirred_nest before calling tcf_blockcast() and decrementing it on return, mirroring the non-blockcast path. This ensures subsequent recursive entries see the updated counter and are correctly limited by MIRRED_NEST_LIMIT.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-63981?
How do I fix CVE-2026-63981?
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-2026-63981 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-63981 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-63981, GHSA-v39p-wrrc-5j75, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-63981.