CVE-2025-38192

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

net: clear the dst when changing skb protocol

A not-so-careful NAT46 BPF program can crash the kernel if it indiscriminately flips ingress packets from v4 to v6:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000 ip6_rcv_core (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:190:20) ipv6_rcv (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:306:8) process_backlog (net/core/dev.c:6186:4) napi_poll (net/core/dev.c:6906:9) net_rx_action (net/core/dev.c:7028:13) do_softirq (kernel/softirq.c:462:3) netif_rx (net/core/dev.c:5326:3) dev_loopback_xmit (net/core/dev.c:4015:2) ip_mc_finish_output (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:363:8) NF_HOOK (./include/linux/netfilter.h:314:9) ip_mc_output (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:400:5) dst_output (./include/net/dst.h:459:9) ip_local_out (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:130:9) ip_send_skb (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:1496:8) udp_send_skb (net/ipv4/udp.c:1040:8) udp_sendmsg (net/ipv4/udp.c:1328:10)

The output interface has a 4->6 program attached at ingress. We try to loop the multicast skb back to the sending socket. Ingress BPF runs as part of netif_rx(), pushes a valid v6 hdr and changes skb->protocol to v6. We enter ip6_rcv_core which tries to use skb_dst(). But the dst is still an IPv4 one left after IPv4 mcast output.

Clear the dst in all BPF helpers which change the protocol. Try to preserve metadata dsts, those may carry non-routing metadata.

This flaw is rated as Moderate severity because exploitation requires a specialized networking setup where an eBPF program performs IPv4 to IPv6 protocol rewriting on ingress or loopback traffic, significantly limiting exposure on standard deployments. While local users transmitting multicast traffic can cause a kernel NULL pointer dereference resulting in a denial of service, attaching the required packet filtering program requires elevated administrative privileges. Systems that do not deploy custom eBPF filters for protocol translation are not vulnerable to this condition.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.