CVE-2026-45842

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

slip: reject VJ receive packets on instances with no rstate array

slhc_init() accepts rslots == 0 as a valid configuration, with the documented meaning of no receive compression. In that case the allocation loop in slhc_init() is skipped, so comp->rstate stays NULL and comp->rslot_limit stays 0 (from the kzalloc of struct slcompress).

The receive helpers do not defend against that configuration. slhc_uncompress() dereferences comp->rstate[x] when the VJ header carries an explicit connection ID, and slhc_remember() later assigns cs = &comp->rstate[…] after only comparing the packets slot number to comp->rslot_limit. Because rslot_limit is 0, slot 0 passes the range check, and the code dereferences a NULL rstate.

The configuration is reachable in-tree through PPP. PPPIOCSMAXCID stores its argument in a signed int, and (val » 16) uses arithmetic shift. Passing 0xffff0000 therefore sign-extends to -1, so val2 + 1 is 0 and ppp_generic.c ends up calling slhc_init(0, 1). Because /dev/ppp open is gated by ns_capable(CAP_NET_ADMIN), the whole path is reachable from an unprivileged user namespace. Once the malformed VJ state is installed, any inbound VJ-compressed or VJ-uncompressed frame that selects slot 0 crashes the kernel in softirq context:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] RIP: 0010:slhc_uncompress (drivers/net/slip/slhc.c:519) Call Trace: ppp_receive_nonmp_frame (drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c:2466) ppp_input (drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c:2359) ppp_async_process (drivers/net/ppp/ppp_async.c:492) tasklet_action_common (kernel/softirq.c:926) handle_softirqs (kernel/softirq.c:623) run_ksoftirqd (kernel/softirq.c:1055) smpboot_thread_fn (kernel/smpboot.c:160) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:436) ret_from_fork (arch/x86/kernel/process.c:164)

Reject the receive side on such instances instead of touching rstate. slhc_uncompress() falls through to its existing bad label, which bumps sls_i_error and enters the toss state. slhc_remember() mirrors that with an explicit sls_i_error increment followed by slhc_toss(); the sls_i_runt counter is not used here because a missing rstate is an internal configuration state, not a runt packet.

The transmit path is unaffected: the only in-tree caller that picks rslots from userspace (ppp_generic.c) still supplies tslots >= 1, and slip.c always calls slhc_init(16, 16), so comp->tstate remains valid and slhc_compress() continues to work.

Weakness

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d71c961febddd855d3ae9a519eeb96c8023f430
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4aa9eca6fda2919027dfd7a7cc69334982d89586
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/72304fec672e8aac9ee7b9c475db96b37cca8d8d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7b0d9e878ec2b21d99ae8051b3dda59cdb66c152
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9e1ff0eead073c4f46d874ad2526b7dda5465faf
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c6980e8b1a86288167f34966fa5219031999b6f1
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/de42f86e2cf5028a97e74c25869d1a962b13c301
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e76607442d5b73e1ba6768f501ef815bb58c2c0e