Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') Affecting kernel-docs-html package, versions <6.12.0-160000.33.1


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.01% (1st percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-SLES1600-KERNELDOCSHTML-17126573
  • published2 Jun 2026
  • disclosed28 May 2026

Introduced: 28 May 2026

NewCVE-2026-23409  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-835  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade SLES:16.0.0 kernel-docs-html to version 6.12.0-160000.33.1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-docs-html package and not the kernel-docs-html package as distributed by SLES. See How to fix? for SLES:16.0.0 relevant fixed versions and status.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

apparmor: fix differential encoding verification

Differential encoding allows loops to be created if it is abused. To prevent this the unpack should verify that a diff-encode chain terminates.

Unfortunately the differential encode verification had two bugs.

  1. it conflated states that had gone through check and already been marked, with states that were currently being checked and marked. This means that loops in the current chain being verified are treated as a chain that has already been verified.

  2. the order bailout on already checked states compared current chain check iterators j,k instead of using the outer loop iterator i. Meaning a step backwards in states in the current chain verification was being mistaken for moving to an already verified state.

Move to a double mark scheme where already verified states get a different mark, than the current chain being kept. This enables us to also drop the backwards verification check that was the cause of the second error as any already verified state is already marked.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1