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NOTABLECVE-2025-39682 +2exploitedNATOA2vulnerability

CISA KEV adds three unrelated Linux kernel flaws in one day, kTLS receive-path logic error, AF_ALG race condition, netfilter ebtables SNAT out-of-bounds write

CISA confirms active exploitation of three separate Linux kernel bugs with no public exploitation narrative behind any of them

Defender actions

  • Identify any Linux hosts running kernel TLS receive-offload (CONFIG_TLS with ktls enabled on the receive path), exposing AF_ALG crypto-API sockets to untrusted local users, or running bridge-netfilter ebtables SNAT with ARP-address rewrite rules (these three configurations are the only confirmed-exploited attack surfaces) and prioritize kernel patching on those hosts ahead of the standard update cycle.

Analysis

CISA added three unrelated Linux kernel vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-09-18, in two separate alerts (CISA, 2026-09-18; CISA, 2026-09-18), and neither alert names a ransomware campaign, an actor, or a technical account of the exploitation behind any of the three; the KEV listing itself is the only public evidence that any of them has been used against a real target. CVE-2025-39682 is a logic error in the kernel's TLS receive path (net/tls/tls_sw.c): a peer on a connection using kernel TLS offload for receive can supply a record sequence where the initial record picked up from the socket's rx_list queue is itself zero-length, a corner case the fix commit describes as previously unhandled (NVD/NIST, mirroring the kernel fix commit), reachable only on hosts that terminate TLS using CONFIG_TLS receive offload, an uncommon but real configuration on high-throughput TLS-terminating proxies and some storage or network appliances, not a default on general-purpose servers or workstations. CVE-2025-39964 is a race condition in the AF_ALG crypto user-API socket (crypto/af_alg.c): concurrent sendmsg() calls to the same socket were never given exclusive-write ownership, letting request payloads interleave and corrupt per-socket state (NVD/NIST, mirroring the kernel fix commit); this requires local access to an AF_ALG socket, which is often restricted or entirely unloaded. CVE-2026-53266 is an out-of-bounds write in the netfilter bridge ebt_snat target: the optional ARP sender-hardware-address rewrite calls skb_store_bits() without first confirming the target range is writable, and when that range sits in a nonlinear socket-buffer fragment backed by a splice-imported file page, the write lands directly on the underlying page rather than a copy (NVD/NIST, mirroring the kernel fix commit); this requires a bridge configured with ebtables SNAT ARP-rewrite rules, plus local low-privilege access to trigger it. Fixed kernel builds: 6.1.149 / 6.6.103 / 6.12.44 / 6.16.4 / 6.17 for CVE-2025-39682; 5.10.245 / 5.15.194 / 6.1.154 / 6.6.108 / 6.12.49 / 6.16.9 for CVE-2025-39964; 5.10.259 / 5.15.210 / 6.1.176 / 6.6.143 / 6.12.94 / 6.18.36 for CVE-2026-53266.

Cited evidence

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its

based on evidence of active exploitation

CISA 2026-09-18

The corner case we missed is when the initial record comes from rx_list, and it's zero length.

If that range is still held in a nonlinear skb fragment backed by a splice-imported file page, skb_store_bits() maps the frag page and copies the new MAC address directly into it.

NVD/NIST 2026-09-19

Sources5

PROVENANCE

AI-generated · no human review · this permalink is the shareable record for the finding · verify operationally critical claims against the linked primary source.