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TI-2024-13031 Aliases CVE-2024-14040GHSA-v44x-j754-46xf

net: nexthop: Increase weight to u16

Priority LOW 35CWE-787Published · Updated

Key facts

Attack vector
Local
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Attack complexity
Low
Impact type
Code execution
Confidentiality · integrity · availability
High · High · High
Fix status
Partial Red Hat: 1 without a fix

Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat. Impact type from CWE-787 and the CVSS impact.

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: nexthop: Increase weight to u16 In CLOS networks, as link failures occur at various points in the network, ECMP weights of the involved nodes are adjusted to compensate. With high fan-out of the involved nodes, and overall high number of nodes, a (non-)ECMP weight ratio that we would like to configure does not fit into 8 bits. Instead of, say, 255:254, we might like to configure something like 1000:999. For these deployments, the 8-bit weight may not be enough. To that end, in this patch increase the next hop weight from u8 to u16. Increasing the width of an integral type can be tricky, because while the code still compiles, the types may not check out anymore, and numerical errors come up. To prevent this, the conversion was done in two steps. First the type was changed from u8 to a single-member structure, which invalidated all uses of the field. This allowed going through them one by one and audit for type correctness. Then the structure was replaced with a vanilla u16 again. This should ensure that no place was missed. The UAPI for configuring nexthop group members is that an attribute NHA_GROUP carries an array of struct nexthop_grp entries: struct nexthop_grp { __u32 id; /* nexthop id - must exist */ __u8 weight; /* weight of this nexthop */ __u8 resvd1; __u16 resvd2; }; The field resvd1 is currently validated and required to be zero. We can lift this requirement and carry high-order bits of the weight in the reserved field: struct nexthop_grp { __u32 id; /* nexthop id - must exist */ __u8 weight; /* weight of this nexthop */ __u8 weight_high; __u16 resvd2; }; Keeping the fields split this way was chosen in case an existing userspace makes assumptions about the width of the weight field, and to sidestep any endianness issues. The weight field is currently encoded as the weight value minus one, because weight of 0 is invalid. This same trick is impossible for the new weight_high field, because zero must mean actual zero. With this in place: - Old userspace is guaranteed to carry weight_high of 0, therefore configuring 8-bit weights as appropriate. When dumping nexthops with 16-bit weight, it would only show the lower 8 bits. But configuring such nexthops implies existence of userspace aware of the extension in the first place. - New userspace talking to an old kernel will work as long as it only attempts to configure 8-bit weights, where the high-order bits are zero. Old kernel will bounce attempts at configuring >8-bit weights. Renaming reserved fields as they are allocated for some purpose is commonly done in Linux. Whoever touches a reserved field is doing so at their own risk. nexthop_grp::resvd1 in particular is currently used by at least strace, however they carry an own copy of UAPI headers, and the conversion should be trivial. A helper is provided for decoding the weight out of the two fields. Forcing a conversion seems preferable to bending backwards and introducing anonymous unions or whatever.

Why it matters now

Exploitation None reported CISA SSVC · not in CISA KEV
EPSS 0.00173 6th percentileScored 2026-11-07
Fix Partial Linux (Linux): 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12Red Hat: 1 without a fix

SSVC decision points

CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3

Exploitation
None
Automatable
No
Technical impact
Total

The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed inStatusSource
LinuxLinux5.13 and later6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12Patch availableCNA
  • Linux VendorLinux Affected 5.13 and later Fixed in 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12 Patch available CNA

CPE names Threatist (inferred) · 1

Inferred from how NVD named this product before; not given by a source.

CPEVersionsRoleVendor
cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*——Linux
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* Versions — — ·Linux

Remediation

  • Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12

Vendor assessments

Red Hat

Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →

ProductStatusPlan or fix
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9AffectedNo fix yet
Not affected: 4 products
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Timeline

  1. 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2024-14040
  2. 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-v44x-j754-46xf
  3. 2026-10-13 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
  4. 2026-10-16 CISA SSVC decision points changed
  5. 2026-10-19 Weakness changed · CISA ADP
  6. 2026-10-21 Fix available: Linux/Linux@2860d59e4ce2bb428c8cecd3b95585012910b7d0, Linux/[email protected] · CNA
  7. 2026-10-21 1 new reference · CNA
  8. 2026-10-30 Fix available: Linux/[email protected], Linux/Linux@f9d682935afe102d6b7060914304c04483d6cbd6 · CNA
  9. 2026-10-30 1 new reference · CNA

References

  • TI-2025-26358 tls: fix handling of zero-length records on the rx_list KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
  • TI-2026-38352 netfilter: bridge: make ebt_snat ARP rewrite writable KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2021-02452 Incorrect authorization in Ubuntu linux kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2013-05264 The (1) get_user and (2) put_user API functions in the Linux kernel before 3.5.5 on the… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2022-00125 Integer overflow in kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
  • TI-2013-01864 The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
See all 21741 →

Sources