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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-72251

| EUVDEUVD-2026-59150 CRITICAL
2026-08-15 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 GHSA-56q2-hf63-wxmq
Critical
Disputed · 9.8 Vendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Medium–Critical)
Vendor (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) PRIMARY
9.8 CRITICAL
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
7.0 HIGH

AV:N since SIP packets are remote, but AC:H because it needs a non-default SIP helper plus an attacker-uncontrolled SKB-clone race; impact is chiefly kernel crash (A:H) with limited leak/corruption.

3.1 AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H
4.0 AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
7.0 HIGH
AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Red Hat
7.0 MEDIUM
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

CVSS VectorVendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Aug 17, 2026 - 07:57 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
9.8 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 06:21 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.8
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 06:21 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

netfilter: nf_nat_sip: reload possible stale data pointer

quoting sashiko: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [..] noticed a potential memory bug and header corruption involving the SIP NAT helper.

In net/netfilter/nf_nat_sip.c:nf_nat_sip(): if (skb_ensure_writable(skb, skb->len)) { nf_ct_helper_log(skb, ct, "cannot mangle packet"); return NF_DROP; } uh = (void *)skb->data + protoff; uh->dest = ct_sip_info->forced_dport; if (!nf_nat_mangle_udp_packet(skb, ct, ctinfo, protoff, 0, 0, NULL, 0)) {

If a cloned or fragmented SKB is reallocated by skb_ensure_writable(), the old data buffer is freed. However, nf_nat_sip() fails to update *dptr to point to the new buffer.

It also appears to use nf_nat_mangle_udp_packet() on what could be a TCP packet, which would overwrite the sequence number with a checksum update. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

nf_conntrack_sip linerizes skbs, hence no fragmented skb can be seen. But clones are possible, so rebuild dptr.

Disable nf_nat_mangle_udp_packet() branch for TCP streams. It doesn't look like this can ever happen, else we should have received bug reports about this, so just check the conntrack is UDP and drop otherwise.

The calling conntrack_sip set ->forced_dport for SIP_HDR_VIA_UDP messages, so I don't think this is ever expected to be true for a TCP stream.

AnalysisAI

Memory-safety flaw in the Linux kernel's netfilter SIP NAT helper (net/netfilter/nf_nat_sip.c) allows a stale, freed data pointer to be used after skb_ensure_writable() reallocates a cloned socket buffer, potentially corrupting kernel memory or crashing the host when SIP connection tracking and NAT are active. The bug affects systems using the nf_nat_sip application-layer gateway; because SIP conntrack linearizes SKBs, only clones (not fragments) trigger it, and a secondary error path could invoke UDP mangling on a TCP stream. No public exploit is identified at time of analysis, EPSS is low (0.22%, 13th percentile), and it is not in CISA KEV.

Technical ContextAI

The vulnerability lives in the netfilter SIP NAT helper, which rewrites Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) signaling payloads so that VoIP flows survive network address translation. When nf_nat_sip() calls skb_ensure_writable() to make the packet mutable, a cloned SKB is reallocated and the old data buffer is freed, but the function fails to reload the caller's *dptr, leaving it pointing into freed memory - a classic use-after-free / stale-pointer condition (CWE-416, though NVD lists CWE as N/A). A secondary defect is that nf_nat_mangle_udp_packet() could be applied to a TCP stream, where a UDP checksum update would clobber the TCP sequence number. The upstream fix rebuilds dptr after reallocation and restricts the mangling path to UDP conntrack, dropping otherwise. No CPE strings were provided; affected components are the in-tree nf_nat_sip and nf_conntrack_sip modules.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: upgrade to a fixed stable kernel - 5.10.261, 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.6.145, 6.12.97, 6.18.40, 7.1.5, or 7.2-rc3 (or your distribution's backported equivalent), applying the corresponding kernel.org stable commits such as https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e38143c9b477f2968024c47c647dd4456a40aff1. Where immediate patching is not possible, the most effective compensating control is to unload and blacklist the SIP application-layer helper - 'modprobe -r nf_nat_sip nf_conntrack_sip' plus a blacklist entry, and/or set the sysctl net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_helper=0 and remove any explicit CT helper set rules for SIP; the trade-off is that NAT traversal for SIP/VoIP signaling will break, so environments relying on the kernel SIP ALG must move that function to an application-layer SBC/proxy. Alternatively, avoid attaching the SIP helper to untrusted traffic by restricting the conntrack helper to trusted VoIP source ranges via nftables 'ct helper' rules.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Important
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Affected

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CVE-2026-72251 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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