CVE-2026-72330
NVD analysis in progress
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/tls: Consume empty data records in tls_sw_read_sock() A peer may send a zero-length TLS application_data record; TLS 1.3 explicitly permits these as a traffic-analysis countermeasure (RFC 8446, Section 5.1). After decryption such a record has full_len == 0. tls_sw_read_sock() hands it to the read_actor, which has no payload to consume and returns zero. The loop treats a zero return as backpressure (used <= 0), requeues the skb at the head of rx_list, and stops. rx_list is serviced head-first on the next call, so the empty record is dequeued, fails the same way, and is requeued again; every later record on the connection is blocked behind it. tls_sw_recvmsg() does not stall on this: a zero-length data record copies nothing and falls through to consume_skb(). Mirror that in the read_sock() path by recognizing an empty data record before the actor runs, consuming it, and continuing.
What this means
- Exposure
- Exploitable remotely over the network, without authentication and with no action from the victim.
- Impact
- An attacker can take the service offline.
- Likelihood
- Its EPSS score stays low: nothing points to imminent exploitation, which is no reason to leave it unpatched.
What to doFold into the next patch cycle. Start with the instances exposed to the internet.
Read automatically from the CVSS vector, the weakness type (CWE) and the EPSS score. The technical description above remains the one published by NIST.