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medium 5.5

CVE-2026-63989 json

bridge: Fix sleep in atomic context in netlink path

published 3mo ago modified last mo. also EUVD-2026-45562

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bridge: Fix sleep in atomic context in netlink path

Since the introduction of the netlink configuration path for bridge ports in commit 25c71c75ac87 ("bridge: bridge port parameters over netlink"), br_setport() was always called with the bridge lock held around it. Back then this decision made sense: The bridge lock protects the STP state of the bridge and its ports and at that time the function only processed three STP related netlink attributes (cost, priority and state).

Nowadays, br_setport() processes a lot more attributes and most of them do not need the bridge lock:

* Bridge flags: Only require RTNL. Read locklessly by the data path. Annotations can be added in net-next.

* FDB port flushing: Only requires the FDB lock.

* Multicast attributes: Only require the multicast lock.

* Group forward mask: Only requires RTNL. Read locklessly by the data path. Annotations can be added in net-next.

* Backup port and NHID: Only require RTNL. Read locklessly by the data path.

This is a problem as the bridge calls dev_set_promiscuity() when certain bridge port flags change and this function can sleep since the commit cited below, resulting in a splat such as [1].

Fix this by reducing the scope of the bridge lock and only take it when processing the three STP related attributes that require it. This is consistent with the multicast attributes where each attribute acquires the multicast lock instead of having one critical section for all relevant attributes.

[1] BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at net/core/dev_addr_lists.c:1262 in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 356, name: bridge preempt_count: 201, expected: 0 RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 2 locks held by bridge/356: #0: ffffffff919473a0 (rtnl_mutex){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: rtnetlink_rcv_msg (net/core/rtnetlink.c:80 net/core/rtnetlink.c:7002) #1: ffff888115072d58 (&br->lock){+...}-{3:3}, at: br_setlink (./include/linux/spinlock.h:348 net/bridge/br_netlink.c:1117) Preemption disabled at: 0x0 Hardware name: Bochs Bochs, BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011 Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl (lib/dump_stack.c:94 lib/dump_stack.c:120) __might_resched.cold (kernel/sched/core.c:9163) netif_rx_mode_run (net/core/dev_addr_lists.c:1262) netif_rx_mode_sync (net/core/dev_addr_lists.c:1428) dev_set_promiscuity (net/core/dev_api.c:289) br_manage_promisc (net/bridge/br_if.c:135 net/bridge/br_if.c:172) br_port_flags_change (net/bridge/br_if.c:242 net/bridge/br_if.c:747) br_setport (net/bridge/br_netlink.c:1000) br_setlink (net/bridge/br_netlink.c:1118) rtnl_bridge_setlink (net/core/rtnetlink.c:5572) rtnetlink_rcv_msg (net/core/rtnetlink.c:7005) netlink_rcv_skb (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:2550) netlink_unicast (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1318 net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1344) netlink_sendmsg (net/netlink/af_netlink.c:1894) __sock_sendmsg (net/socket.c:787 (discriminator 4) net/socket.c:802 (discriminator 4)) ____sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2698) ___sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2752) __sys_sendmsg (net/socket.c:2784) do_syscall_64 (arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94) entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:121)

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.35, 7.0.12, 7.1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-63989

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1003.4
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.15
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-63989

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-63989 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: bridge: Fix sleep in atomic context in netlink path

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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