CVE-2026-23398: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: icmp: fix NULL pointer dereference in icmp_tag_validation() icmp_tag_validation() unconditionally dereferences the result of rcu_dereference(inet_protos[proto]) without checking for NULL. The inet_protos[] array is sparse -- only about 15 of 256 protocol numbers have registered handlers. When ip_no_pmtu_disc is set to 3 (hardened PMTU mode) and the kernel receives an ICMP Fragmentation Needed error with a quoted inner IP header containing an unregistered protocol number, the NULL dereference causes a kernel panic in softirq context. Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000002: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000010-0x0000000000000017] RIP: 0010:icmp_unreach (net/ipv4/icmp.c:1085 net/ipv4/icmp.c:1143) Call Trace: <IRQ> icmp_rcv (net/ipv4/icmp.c:1527) ip_protocol_deliver_rcu (net/ipv4/ip_input.c:207) ip_local_deliver_finish (net/ipv4/ip_input.c:242) ip_local_deliver (net/ipv4/ip_input.c:262) ip_rcv (net/ipv4/ip_input.c:573) __netif_receive_skb_one_core (net/core/dev.c:6164) process_backlog (net/core/dev.c:6628) handle_softirqs (kernel/softirq.c:561) </IRQ> Add a NULL check before accessing icmp_strict_tag_validation. If the protocol has no registered handler, return false since it cannot perform strict tag validation.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 3.14.1, before 5.10.253 (fixed in 5.10.253); from 5.11, before 5.15.203 (fixed in 5.15.203); from 5.16, before 6.1.167 (fixed in 6.1.167); from 6.2, before 6.6.130 (fixed in 6.6.130); from 6.7, before 6.12.78 (fixed in 6.12.78); from 6.13, before 6.18.20 (fixed in 6.18.20); …

Published 2026-03-26. Last modified 2026-07-14.