DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23086

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vsock/virtio: cap TX credit to local buffer size The virtio transports derives its TX credit directly from peer_buf_alloc, which is set from the remote endpoint's SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE value. On the host side this means that the amount of data we are willing to queue for a connection is scaled by a guest-chosen buffer size, rather than the host's own vsock configuration. A malicious guest can advertise a large buffer and read slowly, causing the host to allocate a correspondingly large amount of sk_buff memory. The same thing would happen in the guest with a malicious host, since virtio transports share the same code base. Introduce a small helper, virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(), that returns min(peer_buf_alloc, buf_alloc), and use it wherever we consume peer_buf_alloc. This ensures the effective TX window is bounded by both the peer's advertised buffer and our own buf_alloc (already clamped to buffer_max_size via SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_MAX_SIZE), so a remote peer cannot force the other to queue more data than allowed by its own vsock settings. On an unpatched Ubuntu 22.04 host (~64 GiB RAM), running a PoC with 32 guest vsock connections advertising 2 GiB each and reading slowly drove Slab/SUnreclaim from ~0.5 GiB to ~57 GiB; the system only recovered after killing the QEMU process. That said, if QEMU memory is limited with cgroups, the maximum memory used will be limited. With this patch applied: Before: MemFree: ~61.6 GiB Slab: ~142 MiB SUnreclaim: ~117 MiB After 32 high-credit connections: MemFree: ~61.5 GiB Slab: ~178 MiB SUnreclaim: ~152 MiB Only ~35 MiB increase in Slab/SUnreclaim, no host OOM, and the guest remains responsive. Compatibility with non-virtio transports: - VMCI uses the AF_VSOCK buffer knobs to size its queue pairs per socket based on the local vsk->buffer_* values; the remote side cannot enlarge those queues beyond what the local endpoint configured. - Hyper-V's vsock transport uses fixed-size VMBus ring buffers and an MTU bound; there is no peer-controlled credit field comparable to peer_buf_alloc, and the remote endpoint cannot drive in-flight kernel memory above those ring sizes. - The loopback path reuses virtio_transport_common.c, so it naturally follows the same semantics as the virtio transport. This change is limited to virtio_transport_common.c and thus affects virtio-vsock, vhost-vsock, and loopback, bringing them in line with the "remote window intersected with local policy" behaviour that VMCI and Hyper-V already effectively have. [Stefano: small adjustments after changing the previous patch] [Stefano: tweak the commit message]

References

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-23086

Affected packages

Debian:12 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source&distro=bookworm

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0 Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

6.1.162-1

Affected versions

6.*

6.1.27-1

6.1.37-1

6.1.38-1

6.1.38-2~bpo11+1

6.1.38-2

6.1.38-3

6.1.38-4~bpo11+1

6.1.38-4

6.1.52-1

6.1.55-1~bpo11+1

6.1.55-1

6.1.64-1

6.1.66-1

6.1.67-1

6.1.69-1~bpo11+1

6.1.69-1

6.1.76-1~bpo11+1

6.1.76-1

6.1.82-1

6.1.85-1

6.1.90-1~bpo11+1

6.1.90-1

6.1.94-1~bpo11+1

6.1.94-1

6.1.98-1

6.1.99-1

6.1.106-1

6.1.106-2

6.1.106-3

6.1.112-1

6.1.115-1

6.1.119-1

6.1.123-1

6.1.124-1

6.1.128-1

6.1.129-1

6.1.133-1

6.1.135-1

6.1.137-1

6.1.139-1

6.1.140-1

6.1.147-1

6.1.148-1

6.1.153-1

6.1.158-1

6.1.159-1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}

Database specific

source

"https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23086.json"

Debian:13 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source&distro=trixie

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0 Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

6.12.69-1

Affected versions

6.*

6.12.38-1

6.12.41-1

6.12.43-1~bpo12+1

6.12.43-1

6.12.48-1

6.12.57-1~bpo12+1

6.12.57-1

6.12.63-1~bpo12+1

6.12.63-1

6.12.69-1~bpo12+1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}

Database specific

source

"https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23086.json"

Debian:14 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source&distro=forky

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0 Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

6.18.8-1

Affected versions

6.*

6.12.38-1

6.12.41-1

6.12.43-1~bpo12+1

6.12.43-1

6.12.48-1

6.12.57-1~bpo12+1

6.12.57-1

6.12.63-1~bpo12+1

6.12.63-1

6.12.69-1~bpo12+1

6.12.69-1

6.12.73-1~bpo12+1

6.12.73-1

6.12.74-1

6.12.74-2~bpo12+1

6.12.74-2

6.12.85-1~bpo12+1

6.12.85-1

6.12.86-1~bpo12+1

6.12.86-1

6.12.88-1~bpo12+1

6.12.88-1

6.12.90-1~bpo12+1

6.12.90-1

6.12.90-2~bpo12+1

6.12.90-2

6.12.94-1~bpo12+1

6.12.94-1

6.12.95-1~bpo12+1

6.12.95-1

6.12.96-1

6.12.100-1

6.12.101-1

6.12.105-1

6.12.107-1

6.13~rc6-1~exp1

6.13~rc7-1~exp1

6.13.2-1~exp1

6.13.3-1~exp1

6.13.4-1~exp1

6.13.5-1~exp1

6.13.6-1~exp1

6.13.7-1~exp1

6.13.8-1~exp1

6.13.9-1~exp1

6.13.10-1~exp1

6.13.11-1~exp1

6.14.3-1~exp1

6.14.5-1~exp1

6.14.6-1~exp1

6.15~rc7-1~exp1

6.15-1~exp1

6.15.1-1~exp1

6.15.2-1~exp1

6.15.3-1~exp1

6.15.4-1~exp1

6.15.5-1~exp1

6.15.6-1~exp1

6.16~rc7-1~exp1

6.16-1~exp1

6.16.1-1~exp1

6.16.3-1~bpo13+1

6.16.3-1

6.16.5-1

6.16.6-1

6.16.7-1

6.16.8-1

6.16.9-1

6.16.10-1

6.16.11-1

6.16.12-1~bpo13+1

6.16.12-1

6.16.12-2

6.17.2-1~exp1

6.17.5-1~exp1

6.17.6-1

6.17.7-1

6.17.7-2

6.17.8-1~bpo13+1

6.17.8-1

6.17.9-1

6.17.10-1

6.17.11-1

6.17.12-1

6.17.13-1~bpo13+1

6.17.13-1

6.18~rc4-1~exp1

6.18~rc4-1~exp2

6.18~rc5-1~exp1

6.18~rc6-1~exp1

6.18~rc7-1~exp1

6.18.1-1~exp1

6.18.2-1~exp1

6.18.3-1

6.18.5-1~bpo13+1

6.18.5-1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}

Database specific

source

"https://storage.googleapis.com/debian-osv/debian-cve-osv/DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23086.json"