Remote service interruption via unbounded redirect flood
Published Aug 15, 2026 · Updated Aug 15, 2026
Improper rate limiting in the Linux kernel allows remote attackers to interrupt service by triggering an ICMP or NDISC packet storm. When peer allocation fails, ip_rt_send_redirect calls icmp_send directly, while IPv6 redirect paths pass a null peer to a limiter that returns true. Reachability requires traffic that causes redirects while peer allocation fails under memory pressure or tree-size limits; the resulting unbounded traffic can exhaust network or processing capacity.
Summary
What happened
Improper rate limiting in the Linux kernel allows remote attackers to interrupt service by triggering an ICMP or NDISC packet storm. When peer allocation fails, ip_rt_send_redirect calls icmp_send directly, while IPv6 redirect paths pass a null peer to a limiter that returns true. Reachability requires traffic that causes redirects while peer allocation fails under memory pressure or tree-size limits; the resulting unbounded traffic can exhaust network or processing capacity.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-74550
- Published
- Aug 15, 2026
- Updated
- Aug 15, 2026
- Vendor
- The Linux Kernel Organization
- Product
- Linux
- Classifications
- CWE-476, T1498
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Aug 15, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Aug 15, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=2.6.39
- Affected versionversion=92d8682926342d2b6aa5b2ecc02221e00e1573a0 <21666f7af49a90ef44d474916b8ef4402dfd74f5
- Affected versionversion=92d8682926342d2b6aa5b2ecc02221e00e1573a0 <5ec5f00fc606a6df8434948c4552b3cb1176595d
- Affected versionversion=92d8682926342d2b6aa5b2ecc02221e00e1573a0 <828f6670d110ff2bf44c743037b38badc315704c
- Affected versionversion=92d8682926342d2b6aa5b2ecc02221e00e1573a0 <dbc3791e3b2472e1ccc08947e0f83b443470ff4f
- Affected versionversion=92d8682926342d2b6aa5b2ecc02221e00e1573a0 <f5ecaa7ea7686fa7ecdb6affc9d3a9a42e4524b1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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