CVE-2026-80978: Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: cap advertised IP tunnel headroom IP tunnel devices derive their advertised needed_headroom from lower output devices. A stack of user-created devices can make the derived value larger than the 16-bit skb header offsets can represent. Once IP output reserves it, skb head expansion can wrap those offsets. The runtime transmit path already caps a growing needed_headroom at 512. Apply the same cap when tunnel configuration publishes needed_headroom derived from a lower output device. Capping the advertised value is safe: IP tunnel transmit still expands the skb when a packet needs more headroom. A nonsensical stacked configuration can therefore incur an extra reallocation, but it cannot publish an unbounded reservation to upper layers.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 3.11, before 5.10.270 (fixed in 5.10.270); from 5.11, before 5.15.221 (fixed in 5.15.221); from 5.16, before 6.1.188 (fixed in 6.1.188); from 6.2, before 6.6.157 (fixed in 6.6.157); from 6.7, before 6.12.109 (fixed in 6.12.109); from 6.13, before 6.18.50 (fixed in 6.18.50); …

Published 2026-09-11. Last modified 2026-09-14.