CVE-2026-68129

gve: fix Rx queue stall on alloc failure

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: August 10, 2026 at 11:58 AM UTC
Updated: October 19, 2026 at 09:17 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: gve: fix Rx queue stall on alloc failure When the system is under extreme memory pressure, page allocations can fail during the Rx buffer refill loop. If the number of buffers posted to hardware falls below a critical low threshold and the refill loop exits due to allocation failures, the queue can stall: 1. The device drops incoming packets because there are no descriptors. 2. Since no packets are processed, no Rx completions are generated. 3. Because no completions occur, NAPI is never scheduled, preventing the refill loop from running again even after memory is freed. This results in a permanent queue stall. Resolve this by introducing a starvation recovery timer for each Rx queue. If the number of buffers posted to hardware falls below a critical low threshold, start a timer to periodically reschedule NAPI. Once NAPI runs and successfully refills the queue above the threshold, the timer is not rescheduled. The threshold is set to 32 because a single maximum-sized Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC) packet can consume up to 19 descriptors in the Rx path. Lower thresholds (such as 8 or 16) would be insufficient to process a complete maximum-sized RSC packet, risking packet drops or unexpected hardware behavior under memory pressure. Setting the threshold to 32 guarantees a safe margin to handle at least one full RSC packet.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

5.149b8dd5e5ea48bbb7532d20c4093a79d8283e4029
Vendor states this is fixed in 0c317349b4baa5038d1fc373bf46d5a2419d1710 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 299d5728a7312fdd02059b074aebbe4ebbd391e4 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 42d525e751c61b876b2b0ae4e71ba7a8ab0c2777 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 689b9f588d2d7323dc66293fe594a68d030f400f (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 91e0249f3ef62b75fe8c9c9372eaba32876e4b3a (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 9db46e19e5d6bdcd4bf811284a5b0df1b984ef80 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in b65352a1bac64442ad95e64f385b40ccb9f1b0db (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.14 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15.216 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.1.183 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.12.101 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.42 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6.151 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.1.6 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.2 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHLinux
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusRECEIVED
CWE
CWE-400

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