[PATCH v2 net] net: gro: compare skb->protocol in gro_list_prepare()

[PATCH v2 net] net: gro: compare skb->protocol in gro_list_prepare()

[Eric Dumazet]

gro_list_prepare() checks whether a held packet may belong to the same
flow as the incoming one by comparing the device, VLAN tag, metadata
and the link-layer header, using dev->hard_header_len as its length.

On devices without a link-layer header (hard_header_len == 0), such as
L3 GRE tunnels, no compared byte carries the outer protocol:
skb->protocol comes from the tunnel header. Packets of different
protocols can then stay eligible, and the GRO handler selected from the
incoming skb->protocol parses the held packet with the wrong layout.

For example, take an IPv4/UDP packet held by UDP GRO and a
VLAN/IPv4/TCP packet received on the same ipgre device.
vlan_gro_receive() reads the first four bytes of the held IPv4 header
as a VLAN header. With crafted values, the held packet survives up to
tcp_gro_receive(), which uses its UDP header as a TCP header. With a
short linear part, the FIN/PSH update of the held packet's TCP flags
can then write into skb_shared_info.

The VLAN, GRE, IPv4 and IPv6 GRO handlers compare the next-protocol
field of their own header, so once the outer protocol matches, the
inner layers are checked too. Only the outermost protocol was not
compared.

Compare skb->protocol too. On Ethernet devices this is redundant with
compare_ether_header(), but it is cheap.

GUE direct IP encapsulation has a similar issue, but there both packets
have the same outer protocol, so it is fixed separately in
gue_gro_receive().

Fixes: 60769a5dcd87 ("ipv4: gre: add GRO capability")
Reported-by: Kyle Zeng <kylebot@openai.com>
Reviewed-by: Willem de Bruijn <willemb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@kernel.org>
---
v2:
 - Fix Signed-off-by typo (Sashiko).
 - Mention that the GUE direct IP case is fixed separately (Sashiko).
 - Add Willem's Reviewed-by.
v1: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20261106195136.2496777-1-edumazet@kernel.org/

This issue was discovered by an AI code review agent. It has not been
triggered, and the fix was only compile-tested.

 net/core/gro.c | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/net/core/gro.c b/net/core/gro.c
index 1b033855a20db6b8b996179f0b81e38393d3864a..08e4731ddb7e6e371790d70a97db2cedad420706 100644
--- a/net/core/gro.c
+++ b/net/core/gro.c
@@ -374,6 +374,7 @@ static void gro_list_prepare(const struct list_head *head,
 		}
 
 		diffs = (unsigned long)p->dev ^ (unsigned long)skb->dev;
+		diffs |= p->protocol != skb->protocol;
 		diffs |= p->vlan_all ^ skb->vlan_all;
 		diffs |= skb_metadata_differs(p, skb);
 		if (maclen == ETH_HLEN)
-- 
2.53.0

Re: [PATCH v2 net] net: gro: compare skb->protocol in gro_list_prepare()

[patchwork-bot+netdevbpf]

Hello:

This patch was applied to netdev/net.git (main)
by Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>:

On Mon,  9 Nov 2026 17:45:40 +0100 you wrote:
> gro_list_prepare() checks whether a held packet may belong to the same
> flow as the incoming one by comparing the device, VLAN tag, metadata
> and the link-layer header, using dev->hard_header_len as its length.
> 
> On devices without a link-layer header (hard_header_len == 0), such as
> L3 GRE tunnels, no compared byte carries the outer protocol:
> skb->protocol comes from the tunnel header. Packets of different
> protocols can then stay eligible, and the GRO handler selected from the
> incoming skb->protocol parses the held packet with the wrong layout.
> 
> [...]

Here is the summary with links:
  - [v2,net] net: gro: compare skb->protocol in gro_list_prepare()
    https://git.kernel.org/netdev/net/c/511582022bfd

You are awesome, thank you!
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