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no cvss —

CVE-2026-98969 json

net/sched: em_text: reject unterminated algo before autoload

published 19d ago modified 12d ago also EUVD-2026-108763

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 11%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net/sched: em_text: reject unterminated algo before autoload

This is a follow-up to commit 9c572a83037a ("net/sched: fix potential stack infoleak in em_text_dump()"), which zero-initialised the dump-side struct. Sashiko pointed at a pre-existing bug that exposed the change-side input-validation gap open.

em_text_change() casts the raw netlink attribute payload to struct tcf_em_text and passes conf->algo, a 16-byte array with no enforced NUL terminator, to textsearch_prepare(). On the TS_AUTOLOAD retry textsearch_prepare() calls request_module("ts_%s", algo); vsnprintf() walks %s until it finds a NUL, so an algo[] with no NUL reads past the array into the adjacent struct fields and payload and feeds those bytes to the usermode helper command line. This is an out-of-bounds read and a kernel memory disclosure.

Reject the attribute when no NUL exists within TC_EM_TEXT_ALGOSIZ bytes, matching the check xt_string has had since 3ab720881b6e.

Conditions to recreate the bug: - CAP_NET_ADMIN on the target netns (namespace-local via unshare -Urn is enough) - install clsact on an interface, then add a basic filter with one text ematch whose algo[] is 16 bytes with no NUL (e.g. "A"*16) and pattern_len at least 1 - the add fails with -ENOENT and the kernel invokes modprobe with a module name made of "ts_" plus the 16 bytes and the adjacent payload

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 7.3
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.113-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98969

  • linux Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-realtime Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98969

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

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.161.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-110789

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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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-2026-98969 updated cvss 3.3

kernel: net/sched: em_text: reject unterminated algo before autoload

  • 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 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 OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    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

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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