Service interruption via misaligned IPv6 checksum validation
Published May 27, 2026 · Updated May 27, 2026
Improper checksum validation in Linux Kernel IPVS allows local users to interrupt IPv6 load-balanced traffic with extension headers. The TCP, UDP, and SCTP checksum paths start validation at the fixed IPv6 header length instead of the parsed iph->len transport offset, so extension-header bytes are included in the checksum calculation. Reachability requires IPVS to process locally supplied IPv6 traffic containing extension headers; affected packets fail validation, interrupting their load-balanced delivery.
Summary
What happened
Improper checksum validation in Linux Kernel IPVS allows local users to interrupt IPv6 load-balanced traffic with extension headers. The TCP, UDP, and SCTP checksum paths start validation at the fixed IPv6 header length instead of the parsed iph->len transport offset, so extension-header bytes are included in the checksum calculation. Reachability requires IPVS to process locally supplied IPv6 traffic containing extension headers; affected packets fail validation, interrupting their load-balanced delivery.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-45850
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Updated
- May 27, 2026
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux Kernel
- Classifications
- T1499
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 27, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 27, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=0bbdd42b7efa66685b6d74701bcde3a596a3a59d <05cfe9863ef049d98141dc2969eefde72fb07625
- Affected versionversion=0bbdd42b7efa66685b6d74701bcde3a596a3a59d <a3ca27762ce8476b4fbf9b2a8f5cb74c38e483e4
- Affected versionversion=2.6.28
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What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
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Technologies
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Your stack
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