[PATCH net v6 2/2] pppoe: drop PFC frames

Qingfang Deng
2026-04-15T02:25:26Z

RFC 2516 Section 7 states that Protocol Field Compression (PFC) is NOT
RECOMMENDED for PPPoE. In practice, pppd does not support negotiating
PFC for PPPoE sessions, and the current PPPoE driver assumes an
uncompressed (2-byte) protocol field. However, the generic PPP layer
function ppp_input() is not aware of the negotiation result, and still
accepts PFC frames.

If a peer with a broken implementation or an attacker sends a frame with
a compressed (1-byte) protocol field, the subsequent PPP payload is
shifted by one byte. This causes the network header to be 4-byte
misaligned, which may trigger unaligned access exceptions on some
architectures.

To reduce the attack surface, drop PPPoE PFC frames. Introduce
ppp_skb_is_compressed_proto() helper function to be used in both
ppp_generic.c and pppoe.c to avoid open-coding.

Fixes: 7fb1b8ca8fa1 ("ppp: Move PFC decompression to PPP generic layer")
Signed-off-by: Qingfang Deng <qingfang.deng@linux.dev>
Reviewed-by: Simon Horman <horms@kernel.org>
---
Changes in v6: none
Link to v5: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260414021353.23471-2-qingfang.deng@linux.dev

drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c | 2 +-
drivers/net/ppp/pppoe.c | 8 +++++++-
include/linux/ppp_defs.h | 16 ++++++++++++++++
3 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c b/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c
index b0d3bc49c685..57c68efa5ff8 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ppp/ppp_generic.c
@@ -2245,7 +2245,7 @@ ppp_do_recv(struct ppp *ppp, struct sk_buff *skb, struct channel *pch)
*/
static void __ppp_decompress_proto(struct sk_buff *skb)
{
- if (skb->data[0] & 0x01)
+ if (ppp_skb_is_compressed_proto(skb))
*(u8 *)skb_push(skb, 1) = 0x00;
}

diff --git a/drivers/net/ppp/pppoe.c b/drivers/net/ppp/pppoe.c
index d546a7af0d54..bdd61c504a1c 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ppp/pppoe.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ppp/pppoe.c
@@ -393,7 +393,7 @@ static int pppoe_rcv(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev,
if (skb_mac_header_len(skb) < ETH_HLEN)
goto drop;

- if (!pskb_may_pull(skb, sizeof(struct pppoe_hdr)))
+ if (!pskb_may_pull(skb, PPPOE_SES_HLEN))
goto drop;

ph = pppoe_hdr(skb);
@@ -403,6 +403,12 @@ static int pppoe_rcv(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev,
if (skb->len < len)
goto drop;

+ /* skb->data points to the PPP protocol header after skb_pull_rcsum.
+ * Drop PFC frames.
+ */
+ if (ppp_skb_is_compressed_proto(skb))
+ goto drop;
+
if (pskb_trim_rcsum(skb, len))
goto drop;

diff --git a/include/linux/ppp_defs.h b/include/linux/ppp_defs.h
index b7e57fdbd413..b1d1f46d7d3b 100644
--- a/include/linux/ppp_defs.h
+++ b/include/linux/ppp_defs.h
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
#define _PPP_DEFS_H_

#include <linux/crc-ccitt.h>
+#include <linux/skbuff.h>
#include <uapi/linux/ppp_defs.h>

#define PPP_FCS(fcs, c) crc_ccitt_byte(fcs, c)
@@ -25,4 +26,19 @@ static inline bool ppp_proto_is_valid(u16 proto)
return !!((proto & 0x0101) == 0x0001);
}

+/**
+ * ppp_skb_is_compressed_proto - checks if PPP protocol in a skb is compressed
+ * @skb: skb to check
+ *
+ * Check if the PPP protocol field is compressed (the least significant
+ * bit of the most significant octet is 1). skb->data must point to the PPP
+ * protocol header.
+ *
+ * Return: Whether the PPP protocol field is compressed.
+ */
+static inline bool ppp_skb_is_compressed_proto(const struct sk_buff *skb)
+{
+ return unlikely(skb->data[0] & 0x01);
+}
+
#endif /* _PPP_DEFS_H_ */
--
2.43.0