MediumCVE-2026-43496

    Linux Kernel: NULL Pointer Dereference (CVE-2026-43496)

    Published Last modified Sources: SUSE, Debian LTS, Ubuntu, Siemens ProductCERT, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

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    What is affected, what to do

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: sch_red: Replace direct dequeue call with peek and qdisc_dequeue_peeked When red qdisc has children (eg qfq qdisc) whose peek() callback is qdisc_peek_dequeued(), we could get a kernel panic. When the parent of such qdiscs (eg illustrated in patch #3 as tbf) wants to retrieve an skb from its child (red in this case), it will do the following: 1a. do a peek() - and when sensing there's an skb the child can offer, then - the child in this case(red) calls its child's (qfq) peek. qfq does the right thing and will return the gso_skb queue packet.

    Update Linux Kernel to version 5.10.258, Linux Kernel to version 5.15.209, Linux Kernel to version 6.1.175.

    Affected
    • Linux Kernel lt 2.6.29..5.10.258
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.11..5.15.209
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.16..6.1.175
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.2..6.6.140
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.7..6.12.88
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.13..6.18.30
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.19..7.0.7
    Fixed in
    • Linux Kernel 5.10.258
    • Linux Kernel 5.15.209
    • Linux Kernel 6.1.175
    • Linux Kernel 6.6.140
    • Linux Kernel 6.12.88
    • Linux Kernel 6.18.30
    • Linux Kernel 7.0.7
    • Linux Kernel 7.1

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    5.5

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: NVD, CVSS v3

    5.5

    CVSS v3

    Severity Medium on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: SUSE, Debian LTS, Ubuntu, Siemens ProductCERT, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

    0.1 %

    EPSS score

    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 1.9

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Medium
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    45.09 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    no public PoC known
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    5.5 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    5.5
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    0.1 %
    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    1.9
    Low — this CVE sits in the lower 10% of all CVEs scored today.
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    —
    Published

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Handle the vulnerability in regular vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2.
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: sch_red: Replace direct dequeue call with peek and qdisc_dequeue_peeked When red qdisc has children (eg qfq qdisc) whose peek() callback is qdisc_peek_dequeued(), we could get a kernel panic. When the parent of such qdiscs (eg illustrated in patch #3 as tbf) wants to retrieve an skb from its child (red in this case), it will do the following: 1a. do a peek() - and when sensing there's an skb the child can offer, then - the child in this case(red) calls its child's (qfq) peek. qfq does the right thing and will return the gso_skb queue packet. Note: if there wasnt a gso_skb entry then qfq will store it there. 1b. invoke a dequeue() on the child (red). And herein lies the problem. - red will call the child's dequeue() which will essentially just try to grab something of qfq's queue. [ 78.667668][ T363] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000048-0x000000000000004f] [ 78.667927][ T363] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 363 Comm: ping Not tainted 7.1.0-rc1-00033-g46f74a3f7d57-dirty #790 PREEMPT(full) [ 78.668263][ T363] Hardware name: Bochs Bochs, BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011 [ 78.668486][ T363] RIP: 0010:qfq_dequeue+0x446/0xc90 [sch_qfq] [ 78.668718][ T363] Code: 54 c0 e8 dd 90 00 f1 48 c7 c7 e0 03 54 c0 48 89 de e8 ce 90 00 f1 48 8d 7b 48 b8 ff ff 37 00 48 89 fa 48 c1 e0 2a 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 74 05 e8 ef a1 e1 f1 48 8b 7b 48 48 8d 54 24 58 48 8d [ 78.669312][ T363] RSP: 0018:ffff88810de573e0 EFLAGS: 00010216 [ 78.669533][ T363] RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000000 [ 78.669790][ T363] RDX: 0000000000000009 RSI: 0000000000000004 RDI: 0000000000000048 [ 78.670044][ T363] RBP: ffff888110dc4000 R08: ffffffffb1b0885a R09: fffffbfff6ba9078 [ 78.670297][ T363] R10: 0000000000000003 R11: ffff888110e31c80 R12: 0000001880000000 [ 78.670560][ T363] R13: ffff888110dc4150 R14: ffff888110dc42b8 R15: 0000000000000200 [ 78.670814][ T363] FS: 00007f66a8f09c40(0000) GS:ffff888163428000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 78.671110][ T363] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 78.671324][ T363] CR2: 000055db4c6a30a8 CR3: 000000010da67000 CR4: 0000000000750ef0 [ 78.671585][ T363] PKRU: 55555554 [ 78.671713][ T363] Call Trace: [ 78.671843][ T363] <TASK> [ 78.671936][ T363] ? __pfx_qfq_dequeue+0x10/0x10 [sch_qfq] [ 78.672148][ T363] ? __pfx__printk+0x10/0x10 [ 78.672322][ T363] ? srso_alias_return_thunk+0x5/0xfbef5 [ 78.672496][ T363] ? lockdep_hardirqs_on_prepare+0xa8/0x1a0 [ 78.672706][ T363] ? srso_alias_return_thunk+0x5/0xfbef5 [ 78.672875][ T363] ? trace_hardirqs_on+0x19/0x1a0 [ 78.673047][ T363] red_dequeue+0x65/0x270 [sch_red] [ 78.673217][ T363] ? srso_alias_return_thunk+0x5/0xfbef5 [ 78.673385][ T363] tbf_dequeue.cold+0xb0/0x70c [sch_tbf] [ 78.673566][ T363] __qdisc_run+0x169/0x1900 The right thing to do in #1b is to grab the skb off gso_skb queue. This patchset fixes that issue by changing #1b to use qdisc_dequeue_peeked() method instead.

    Source: suse_csaf, Debian LTS Advisories, Ubuntu Security Notices, siemens_advisory, BSI WID Portal, BSI CSAF, NVD (NIST), Microsoft Security Update Guide, CVE.org (MITRE), cvelistv5, ENISA EUVD

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    LinuxLinux
    • 5.16 – < 6.1.175
    • 6.7 – < 6.12.88
    • 6.2 – < 6.6.140
    • 6.19 – < 7.0.7
    • 5.11 – < 5.15.209
    • —
    • 2.6.29 – < 5.10.258
    • 6.13 – < 6.18.30
    • 6.1.175
    • 6.12.88
    • 6.6.140
    • 7.0.7
    • 5.15.209
    • 7.1
    • 5.10.258
    • 6.18.30
    SiemensSIMATIC S7
    • 1500 TM MFP V1.1.1 GNU/Linux subsystem
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Affected operating systems

    Affected operating systems
    Linuxdebianlinuxbookworm
    Linuxdebianlinuxbullseye
    Linuxdebianlinux-6.1bullseye
    Linuxubuntulinux-oracle-7.0noble
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel7.1
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel—

    References & sources

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. Record modifiedSiemens ADP

      Show 2 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Affected versions (publisher)added
      —
      New affected value received. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2026/43xxx/CVE-2026-43496.json">CVE-2026-43496</a>
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-784472.html

      Source identifier: 0b142b55-0307-4c5a-b3c9-f314f3fb7c5e

    2. Record modifiedLinux

      Show 24 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/03b0aaeba082ae981a0dfe96cdd03d02050537a1
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/36aa34f42cb6842cf371f3a2d3e855d24fd57a50
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/458d5615272d3de535748342eb68ca492343048c
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/45cd83c5c470ba49fe261489c8358ad7b9df7c45
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/587dcf970a525f543d8b5855d9f37a4ca97b76ef
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8d09618840b99ef00154d3e731ce9b11e096196d
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c7335f4dc0fa21f7015b910c6fc2f4d599732328
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ce051eede433f876d322ac3550a36a3c6fc4c231
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/03b0aaeba082ae981a0dfe96cdd03d02050537a1
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/36aa34f42cb6842cf371f3a2d3e855d24fd57a50
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/458d5615272d3de535748342eb68ca492343048c
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/45cd83c5c470ba49fe261489c8358ad7b9df7c45
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/587dcf970a525f543d8b5855d9f37a4ca97b76ef
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8d09618840b99ef00154d3e731ce9b11e096196d
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c7335f4dc0fa21f7015b910c6fc2f4d599732328
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ce051eede433f876d322ac3550a36a3c6fc4c231
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/03b0aaeba082ae981a0dfe96cdd03d02050537a1 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/36aa34f42cb6842cf371f3a2d3e855d24fd57a50 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/458d5615272d3de535748342eb68ca492343048c Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/45cd83c5c470ba49fe261489c8358ad7b9df7c45 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/587dcf970a525f543d8b5855d9f37a4ca97b76ef Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8d09618840b99ef00154d3e731ce9b11e096196d Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c7335f4dc0fa21f7015b910c6fc2f4d599732328 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ce051eede433f876d322ac3550a36a3c6fc4c231 Types: Patch
      —

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

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