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CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-72020

Vulnerability intelligence

Published Aug 15, 2026Sources checked Sep 26, 2026
9.8CRITICALCVSS out of 10
What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-72020 and is rated Critical severity with a CVSS score of 9.8. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog
EPSS0.8%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability
Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field
Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships
Overview

What is CVE-2026-72020?

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ipvs: reset full ip_vs_seq structs in ip_vs_conn_new Commit 9a05475cebdd ("ipvs: avoid kmem_cache_zalloc in ip_vs_conn_new") changed ip_vs_conn_new() to allocate an ip_vs_conn object with kmem_cache_alloc(). The function then initializes many fields explicitly, but only resets in_seq.delta and out_seq.delta in the two struct ip_vs_seq members. That leaves init_seq and previous_delta uninitialized. This is normally harmless while the corresponding IP_VS_CONN_F_IN_SEQ or IP_VS_CONN_F_OUT_SEQ flag is clear. For connections learned from a sync message, however, ip_vs_proc_conn() preserves those flags from IP_VS_CONN_F_BACKUP_MASK and passes opt=NULL when the message omits IPVS_OPT_SEQ_DATA. In that case the new connection can be hashed with SEQ flags set but with the rest of in_seq/out_seq still containing stale slab data. When a packet for such a connection is later handled by an IPVS application helper, vs_fix_seq() and vs_fix_ack_seq() use previous_delta and init_seq to rewrite TCP sequence numbers. A malformed sync message can therefore make forwarded packets carry stale slab bytes in their TCP seq/ack numbers, and can also corrupt the forwarded TCP flow. Reset both struct ip_vs_seq members completely before publishing the connection. This matches the existing "reset struct ip_vs_seq" comment and keeps the sequence-adjustment gates inactive unless valid sequence data is installed later.