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Fencer Vulns
high 8.2

CVE-2021-46955 json

openvswitch: fix stack OOB read while fragmenting IPv4 packets

published 2024-02-27 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33603

cvss
8.2
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

openvswitch: fix stack OOB read while fragmenting IPv4 packets

running openvswitch on kernels built with KASAN, it's possible to see the following splat while testing fragmentation of IPv4 packets:

BUG: KASAN: stack-out-of-bounds in ip_do_fragment+0x1b03/0x1f60 Read of size 1 at addr ffff888112fc713c by task handler2/1367

CPU: 0 PID: 1367 Comm: handler2 Not tainted 5.12.0-rc6+ #418 Hardware name: Red Hat KVM, BIOS 1.11.1-4.module+el8.1.0+4066+0f1aadab 04/01/2014 Call Trace: dump_stack+0x92/0xc1 print_address_description.constprop.7+0x1a/0x150 kasan_report.cold.13+0x7f/0x111 ip_do_fragment+0x1b03/0x1f60 ovs_fragment+0x5bf/0x840 [openvswitch] do_execute_actions+0x1bd5/0x2400 [openvswitch] ovs_execute_actions+0xc8/0x3d0 [openvswitch] ovs_packet_cmd_execute+0xa39/0x1150 [openvswitch] genl_family_rcv_msg_doit.isra.15+0x227/0x2d0 genl_rcv_msg+0x287/0x490 netlink_rcv_skb+0x120/0x380 genl_rcv+0x24/0x40 netlink_unicast+0x439/0x630 netlink_sendmsg+0x719/0xbf0 sock_sendmsg+0xe2/0x110 ____sys_sendmsg+0x5ba/0x890 ___sys_sendmsg+0xe9/0x160 __sys_sendmsg+0xd3/0x170 do_syscall_64+0x33/0x40 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae RIP: 0033:0x7f957079db07 Code: c3 66 90 41 54 41 89 d4 55 48 89 f5 53 89 fb 48 83 ec 10 e8 eb ec ff ff 44 89 e2 48 89 ee 89 df 41 89 c0 b8 2e 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 35 44 89 c7 48 89 44 24 08 e8 24 ed ff ff 48 RSP: 002b:00007f956ce35a50 EFLAGS: 00000293 ORIG_RAX: 000000000000002e RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000000019 RCX: 00007f957079db07 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00007f956ce35ae0 RDI: 0000000000000019 RBP: 00007f956ce35ae0 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 00007f9558006730 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000293 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 00007f956ce37308 R14: 00007f956ce35f80 R15: 00007f956ce35ae0

The buggy address belongs to the page: page:00000000af2a1d93 refcount:0 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000 index:0x0 pfn:0x112fc7 flags: 0x17ffffc0000000() raw: 0017ffffc0000000 0000000000000000 dead000000000122 0000000000000000 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000000ffffffff 0000000000000000 page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected

addr ffff888112fc713c is located in stack of task handler2/1367 at offset 180 in frame: ovs_fragment+0x0/0x840 [openvswitch]

this frame has 2 objects: [32, 144) 'ovs_dst' [192, 424) 'ovs_rt'

Memory state around the buggy address: ffff888112fc7000: f3 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ffff888112fc7080: 00 f1 f1 f1 f1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 >ffff888112fc7100: 00 00 00 f2 f2 f2 f2 f2 f2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ^ ffff888112fc7180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ffff888112fc7200: 00 00 00 00 00 00 f2 f2 f2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

for IPv4 packets, ovs_fragment() uses a temporary struct dst_entry. Then, in the following call graph:

ip_do_fragment() ip_skb_dst_mtu() ip_dst_mtu_maybe_forward() ip_mtu_locked()

the pointer to struct dst_entry is used as pointer to struct rtable: this turns the access to struct members like rt_mtu_locked into an OOB read in the stack. Fix this changing the temporary variable used for IPv4 packets in ovs_fragment(), similarly to what is done for IPv6 few lines below.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 3.17, 4.4.269, 4.9.269, 4.14.233, 4.19.191, 5.4.118, 5.10.36, 5.11.20, 5.12.3, 5.13
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.38-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-46955

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-151.157
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-77.86
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1109.116
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.53
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1046.49
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1097.99
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1041.42
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.53

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-46955

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP3_Update_42 SLE Live Patching 15 SP3 12-150300.7.6.1
  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP3_Update_43 SLE Live Patching 15 SP3 11-150300.7.6.1
  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP3_Update_43 SLE Live Patching 15 SP3 10-150300.7.6.1
  • kgraft-patch-SLE12-SP5_Update_54 SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 11-8.10.1
  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP3_Update_42 SLE Live Patching 15 SP3 11-150300.7.6.1
  • kgraft-patch-SLE12-SP5_Update_56 SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 9-8.6.1
  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP3_Update_43 SLE Live Patching 15 SP3 9-150300.7.6.1
  • kernel-livepatch-SLE15-SP2_Update_47 SLE Live Patching 15 SP2 9-150200.5.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:0244-1SUSE-SU-2025:0240-1SUSE-SU-2025:0106-1SUSE-SU-2025:0103-1SUSE-SU-2025:0101-1SUSE-SU-2025:0091-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-46955 updated cvss 5.3

kernel: openvswitch: fix stack OOB read while fragmenting IPv4 packets

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.75% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.