CRITICAL: CVE-2026-63886 (CVSS 9.8) — multiple products

CVE: CVE-2026-63886

CVSS: 9.8 (3.1) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: CRITICAL

Status: Critical advisory

Affected

_See vendor advisory_

Summary

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

scsi: target: iscsi: Validate CHAP_R length before base64 decode

chap_server_compute_hash() allocates client_digest as

kzalloc(chap->digest_size) and then, for BASE64-encoded responses,

passes chap_r directly to chap_base64_decode() without checking whether

the input length could produce more than digest_size bytes of output.

chap_base64_decode() writes to the destination unconditionally as long

as there is input to consume. With MAX_RESPONSE_LENGTH set to 128 and

the "0b" prefix stripped by extract_param(), up to 127 base64 characters

can reach the decoder. 127 characters decode to 95 bytes. For SHA-256

(digest_size=32) this overflows client_digest by 63 bytes; for MD5

(digest_size=16) the overflow is 79 bytes.

The length check at line 344 fires after the write has already happened.

The HEX branch in the same switch statement already validates the length

up front. Apply the same approach to the BASE64 branch: strip trailing

base64 padding characters, then reject any input whose data length

exceeds DIV_ROUND_UP(digest_size * 4, 3) before calling the decoder.

Stripping trailing '=' before the comparison handles both padded and

unpadded encodings. chap_base64_decode() already returns early on '=',

so the full original string is still passed to the decoder unchanged.

The mutual CHAP path decodes CHAP_C into initiatorchg_binhex, which is

kzalloc(CHAP_CHALLENGE_STR_LEN). extract_param() caps initiatorchg at

CHAP_CHALLENGE_STR_LEN characters, so at most CHAP_CHALLENGE_STR_LEN-1

base64 characters reach the decoder. The maximum decoded size,

DIV_ROUND_UP((CHAP_CHALLENGE_STR_LEN-1) * 3, 4), is less than

CHAP_CHALLENGE_STR_LEN, so no overflow is possible there. A comment is

added at the call site to document this.

Verified Sources

• NVD entry
• GitHub Advisory
• MITRE

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4a3a19c98a8207ad08bec554703d90f2c34a8cc6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82454e6f21e56ea9a0a9de7d0ff7e1dfb83e34d6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/85db7391310b1304d2dc8ae3b0b12105a9567147
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bf154c657828ed05399bca5d98cf1611bb048b12
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c04e85799356120209b351a148ac2db888d5ffd9
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/edd06675a02376ea8347dba7c29ad982ba5b36ee

_Validated by the Lyrie Threat Intelligence Pipeline — 3 independent sources confirmed before publication. No speculation._