From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
To: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>,
Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>, Simon Horman <horms@kernel.org>,
Cong Wang <amwang@redhat.com>
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, clm@fb.com,
gustavold@gmail.com, kernel-team@meta.com,
Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Subject: [PATCH] netpoll: fix IPv6 local-address corruption
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:31:16 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260424-netpoll_fix-v1-1-3a55348c625f@debian.org> (raw)
netpoll_setup() decides whether to auto-populate the local source
address by testing np->local_ip.ip, which only inspects the first 4
bytes of the union inet_addr storage.
For an IPv6 netpoll whose caller-supplied local address has a zero
high-32 bits (::1, ::<suffix>, IPv4-mapped ::ffff:a.b.c.d, etc.), this
misdetects the address as unset (which they are not, but the first
4 bytes are empty), calls netpoll_take_ipv6() and overwrites it with
whatever matching link-local/global address the device happens to expose
first.
Introduce a helper netpoll_local_ip_unset() that picks the correct
family-aware test (ipv6_addr_any() for IPv6, !.ip for IPv4) and use it
from netpoll_setup().
Reproducer is something like:
echo "::2" > local_ip
echo 1 > enabled
cat local_ip
# before this fix: 2001:db8::1 (caller-supplied ::2 was clobbered)
# after this fix: ::2
Fixes: b7394d2429c1 ("netpoll: prepare for ipv6")
Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
---
I've found this problem while using Chris' new AI toy (kres - Kernel
code RESearch agent), against netpoll code.
https://github.com/masoncl/kres
---
net/core/netpoll.c | 19 ++++++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/net/core/netpoll.c b/net/core/netpoll.c
index cd74beffd209c..4381e0fc25bf4 100644
--- a/net/core/netpoll.c
+++ b/net/core/netpoll.c
@@ -704,6 +704,23 @@ static int netpoll_take_ipv4(struct netpoll *np, struct net_device *ndev)
return 0;
}
+/*
+ * Test whether the caller left np->local_ip unset, so that
+ * netpoll_setup() should auto-populate it from the egress device.
+ *
+ * np->local_ip is a union of __be32 (IPv4) and struct in6_addr (IPv6),
+ * so an IPv6 address whose first 4 bytes are zero (e.g. ::1, ::2,
+ * IPv4-mapped ::ffff:a.b.c.d) must not be tested via the IPv4 arm —
+ * doing so would misclassify a caller-supplied address as unset and
+ * silently overwrite it with whatever address the device exposes.
+ */
+static bool netpoll_local_ip_unset(const struct netpoll *np)
+{
+ if (np->ipv6)
+ return ipv6_addr_any(&np->local_ip.in6);
+ return !np->local_ip.ip;
+}
+
int netpoll_setup(struct netpoll *np)
{
struct net *net = current->nsproxy->net_ns;
@@ -747,7 +764,7 @@ int netpoll_setup(struct netpoll *np)
rtnl_lock();
}
- if (!np->local_ip.ip) {
+ if (netpoll_local_ip_unset(np)) {
if (!np->ipv6) {
err = netpoll_take_ipv4(np, ndev);
if (err)
---
base-commit: e728258debd553c95d2e70f9cd97c9fde27c7130
change-id: 20260424-netpoll_fix-88842a798663
Best regards,
--
Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
reply other threads:[~2026-04-24 15:31 UTC|newest]
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