Reference page — cumulative record through Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
Linux Linux — net: drop bad gso csum_start and offset in virtio_net_hdr
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
L L L N U N N H 5.5 .0022 12.9 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
Linux 27874ca77bd2b05a3779c7b3a5c75d8dd7f0b40f – —
Linux 5.15.165 – —
TIMELINE
Aug 17 Reserved by Linux
Aug 26 Published (CNA: Linux)
Aug 4 RESCORED — CVE-2024-43897 (Linux). CVSS 7.8 → 5.5 (NVD).
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: drop bad gso csum_start and offset in virtio_net_hdr
Tighten csum_start and csum_offset checks in virtio_net_hdr_to_skb
for GSO packets.
The function already checks that a checksum requested with
VIRTIO_NET_HDR_F_NEEDS_CSUM is in skb linear. But for GSO packets
this might not hold for segs after segmentation.
Syzkaller demonstrated to reach this warning in skb_checksum_help
offset = skb_checksum_start_offset(skb);
ret = -EINVAL;
if (WARN_ON_ONCE(offset >= skb_headlen(skb)))
By injecting a TSO packet:
WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 3539 at net/core/dev.c:3284 skb_checksum_help+0x3d0/0x5b0
ip_do_fragment+0x209/0x1b20 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:774
ip_finish_output_gso net/ipv4/ip_output.c:279 [inline]
__ip_finish_output+0x2bd/0x4b0 net/ipv4/ip_output.c:301
iptunnel_xmit+0x50c/0x930 net/ipv4/ip_tunnel_core.c:82
ip_tunnel_xmit+0x2296/0x2c70 net/ipv4/ip_tunnel.c:813
__gre_xmit net/ipv4/ip_gre.c:469 [inline]
ipgre_xmit+0x759/0xa60 net/ipv4/ip_gre.c:661
__netdev_start_xmit include/linux/netdevice.h:4850 [inline]
netdev_start_xmit include/linux/netdevice.h:4864 [inline]
xmit_one net/core/dev.c:3595 [inline]
dev_hard_start_xmit+0x261/0x8c0 net/core/dev.c:3611
__dev_queue_xmit+0x1b97/0x3c90 net/core/dev.c:4261
packet_snd net/packet/af_packet.c:3073 [inline]
The geometry of the bad input packet at tcp_gso_segment:
[ 52.003050][ T8403] skb len=12202 headroom=244 headlen=12093 tailroom=0
[ 52.003050][ T8403] mac=(168,24) mac_len=24 net=(192,52) trans=244
[ 52.003050][ T8403] shinfo(txflags=0 nr_frags=1 gso(size=1552 type=3 segs=0))
[ 52.003050][ T8403] csum(0x60000c7 start=199 offset=1536
ip_summed=3 complete_sw=0 valid=0 level=0)
Mitigate with stricter input validation.
csum_offset: for GSO packets, deduce the correct value from gso_type.
This is already done for USO. Extend it to TSO. Let UFO be:
udp[46]_ufo_fragment ignores these fields and always computes the
checksum in software.
csum_start: finding the real offset requires parsing to the transport
header. Do not add a parser, use existing segmentation parsing. Thanks
to SKB_GSO_DODGY, that also catches bad packets that are hw offloaded.
Again test both TSO and USO. Do not test UFO for the above reason, and
do not test UDP tunnel offload.
GSO packet are almost always CHECKSUM_PARTIAL. USO packets may be
CHECKSUM_NONE since commit 10154dbded6d6 ("udp: Allow GSO transmit
from devices with no checksum offload"), but then still these fields
are initialized correctly in udp4_hwcsum/udp6_hwcsum_outgoing. So no
need to test for ip_summed == CHECKSUM_PARTIAL first.
This revises an existing fix mentioned in the Fixes tag, which broke
small packets with GSO offload, as detected by kselftests.
Lifecycle
Complete event history — 3 events, chronological
| Date | Event | Detail |
| August 17, 2024 | Reserved | Reserved by Linux |
| August 26, 2024 | Published | Published (CNA: Linux) |
| August 4, 2026 | RESCORED | RESCORED — CVE-2024-43897 (Linux). CVSS 7.8 → 5.5 (NVD). |
Affected
Affected products and packages — 2 rows
| Vendor | Product / Package | Ecosystem | Version introduced | Fixed |
| Linux | Linux | — | 27874ca77bd2b05a3779c7b3a5c75d8dd7f0b40f | — |
| Linux | Linux | — | 5.15.165 | — |
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2024-43897 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.