CVE-2026-63981
net/sched: act_mirred: Fix blockcast recursion bypass leading to stack overflow
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: act_mirred: Fix blockcast recursion bypass leading to stack overflow
tcf_mirred_act() checks sched_mirred_nest against MIRRED_NEST_LIMIT (4)
to prevent deep recursion. However, when the action uses blockcast
(tcfm_blockid != 0), the function returns at the tcf_blockcast() call
BEFORE reaching the counter increment. As a result, the recursion
counter never advances and the limit check is entirely bypassed.
When two devices share a TC egress block with a mirred blockcast rule,
a packet egressing on device A is mirrored to device B via blockcast;
device B's egress TC re-enters tcf_mirred_act() via blockcast and
mirrors back to A, creating an unbounded recursion loop:
tcf_mirred_act -> tcf_blockcast -> tcf_mirred_to_dev -> dev_queue_xmit
-> sch_handle_egress -> tcf_classify -> tcf_mirred_act -> (repeat)
This recursion continues until the kernel stack overflows.
The bug is reachable from an unprivileged user via
unshare(CLONE_NEWUSER | CLONE_NEWNET): user namespaces grant
CAP_NET_ADMIN in the new network namespace, which is sufficient to
create dummy devices, attach clsact qdiscs with shared blocks, and
install mirred blockcast filters.
BUG: TASK stack guard page was hit at ffffc90000b7fff8
Oops: stack guard page: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI
CPU: 2 UID: 1000 PID: 169 Comm: poc Not tainted 7.0.0-rc7-next-20260410
RIP: 0010:xas_find+0x17/0x480
Call Trace:
xa_find+0x17b/0x1d0
tcf_mirred_act+0x640/0x1060
tcf_action_exec+0x400/0x530
basic_classify+0x128/0x1d0
tcf_classify+0xd83/0x1150
tc_run+0x328/0x620
__dev_queue_xmit+0x797/0x3100
tcf_mirred_to_dev+0x7b1/0xf70
tcf_mirred_act+0x68a/0x1060
[repeating ~30+ times until stack overflow]
Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt
Fix this by incrementing sched_mirred_nest before calling
tcf_blockcast() and decrementing it on return, mirroring the
non-blockcast path. This ensures subsequent recursive entries see the
updated counter and are correctly limited by MIRRED_NEST_LIMIT.
