# CVE-2026-90083: net/sched: act_ife: Only operate on Ethernet frames

> A local attacker with high privileges can trigger a kernel panic in the Linux kernel's IFE traffic control action by redirecting non-Ethernet frames.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 17 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-102546, BELL-CVE-2026-90083, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-90083, GHSA-28qx-7jq4-9v6v, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-90083

## What is CVE-2026-90083?

CVE-2026-90083 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 17 Sep 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_ife: Only operate on Ethernet frames

act_ife encapsulates/decapsulates the original Ethernet header and uses
skb->dev->hard_header_len as the length of that header. That is only
correct for Ethernet devices: on a device where hard_header_len does not
match the L2 header that was actually pulled (PPP reports PPP_HDRLEN
while nothing is stripped on ingress), the ingress skb_push()/skb_pull()
use the wrong length and can hit skb_under_panic when headroom is tight.

IFE is Ethernet-only by design - it builds an outer ethhdr, rewrites
h_source/h_dest/h_proto, and calls eth_type_trans() on decode - so
instead of trying to make the offsets work for arbitrary link types,
simply drop packets that do not carry an Ethernet header.

Checking skb->dev->type alone is not enough. We have to cater for a
corner case where mirred can redirect an skb from a non-Ethernet device
to an Ethernet one, and skb->dev then says nothing about the framing the
skb actually has: an skb redirected from ppp0 reaches the target's ingress
hook with mac_len 0 and no Ethernet header at all. So at ingress also
require mac_len to be ETH_HLEN. On egress mac_len is not maintained, so
the device type is all we have; a bogus redirect there yields a malformed
frame rather than an out-of-bounds push, and it would be malformed with or
without IFE.

That corner case is not theoretical - redirecting from ppp0 into a veth
that has an ife encode action on its ingress hook panics without this
patch:

  skbuff: skb_under_panic: len:98 put:14 head:ffff88800e410000
          data:ffff88800e40fff5 tail:0x57 end:0x640 dev:veth3
  kernel BUG at net/core/skbuff.c:214!
  Call Trace:
   skb_push (net/core/skbuff.c:224 net/core/skbuff.c:2657)
   tcf_ife_act (net/sched/act_ife.c:829 net/sched/act_ife.c:874)
   tc_run (net/core/dev.c:4463)
   netif_receive_skb (net/core/dev.c:6463 net/core/dev.c:6522)
   tcf_mirred_to_dev (net/sched/act_mirred.c:248 net/sched/act_mirred.c:328)
   tcf_mirred_act (net/sched/act_mirred.c:489)
   tc_run (net/core/dev.c:4463)
   process_backlog (net/core/dev.c:6728)

With Ethernet framing guaranteed, use ETH_HLEN instead of
hard_header_len.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-90083?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-90083?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-90083 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-90083 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-90083 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-90083 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 17 Sep 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-2026-90083 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. 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-2026-90083/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-90083/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-90083
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-90083
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-90083

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-90083/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.