CVE-2025-38572

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's IPv6 networking subsystem. A remote attacker could trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) or cause system instability by transmitting specially crafted network packets with excessively long IPv6 extension headers. During packet segmentation processing, these oversized headers cause an integer overflow when calculating internal packet offsets, which can lead to a kernel crash.

A moderate severity flaw was found in the Linux kernel's IPv6 networking subsystem, affecting the kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. During IPv6 packet segmentation in ipv6_gso_segment(), a specially crafted network packet with excessively long IPv6 extension headers can cause the 16-bit skb->transport_header field, which stores internal packet offsets, to overflow. A remote attacker able to transmit such crafted packets could trigger this integer overflow, leading to a kernel warning or crash and resulting in a denial of service or system instability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 is affected and a fix is being pursued through the standard update process. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 through 9 and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS are not affected because the vulnerable code is not present in those products. Red Hat rates this flaw as Moderate impact, while NIST and CVE.org assign it a CVSS 3.1 score of 7.8 (Important); Red Hat's rating reflects that the flaw manifests as a denial-of-service condition triggered by crafted packets.

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.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.