Weiming Shi wrote:

tun_xdp_one() returns -EINVAL on a frame shorter than ETH_HLEN without
freeing the page that vhost_net_build_xdp() allocated for it.
tun_sendmsg() discards that -EINVAL and still returns total_len, so
vhost_tx_batch() takes the success path and never frees the page; each
short frame in a batch leaks one page-frag chunk.

A local process that can open /dev/net/tun and /dev/vhost-net can hit
this path: it attaches a tun/tap device as the vhost-net backend and
feeds TX descriptors whose length minus the virtio-net header is below
ETH_HLEN. Each kick leaks the page-frag chunks for that batch, and a
tight submission loop exhausts host memory and triggers an OOM panic.
Free the page before returning -EINVAL, matching the XDP-program error
path in the same function.

Fixes: 049584807f1d ("tun: add missing verification for short frame")
Reported-by: Xiang Mei <redacted>
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7
Signed-off-by: Weiming Shi <redacted>

Reviewed-by: Willem de Bruijn <willemb@google.com>