CVE-2026-99281
CVE-2026-99281CVE-2026-99281
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
tun: Require CAP_NET_ADMIN to attach to an ownerless device
Twenty years ago I made creating a tuntap device require CAP_NET_ADMIN
in commit ca6bb5d7ab22 ("[NET]: Require CAP_NET_ADMIN to create tuntap
devices.")
The idea was to allow the permissions on /dev/net/tun to be relaxed to
0666 and thus allow owners of tun devices assigned with TUNSETOWNER to
actually open it and get at their devices.
What we missed at the time was that persistent devices with *no* owner
were already essentially world-consumable, and anyone who could open
the device node could also attach to those.
Even then, using persistent devices with no explicitly set owner — on
the (false) presumption that CAP_NET_ADMIN would be required to open
them — wasn't an egregious userspace bug. There are cases where it does
make sense to separate the creation/configuration of the netdevice, from
the process which shovels packets into it.
Since then, TUNSE
Scoring
| Last modified | 2026-11-07 |