When a router encounters an IPv6 packet too big to transmit to the next-hop, it returns an ICMP6 "Packet Too Big" (PTB) message to the sender. The sender caches this updated Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) so it knows not to exceed this value when subsequently routing to the same host.

In Linux kernels prior to 6.3, garbage collection is run on the IPv6 Destination Route Cache if the number of entries exceeds a threshold when adding the destination to the cache. This garbage collection examines every entry in the cache while holding a lock. In these affected kernel versions, a flood of the IPv6 ICMP6 PTB messages could cause high lock contention and increased CPU usage, leading to a Denial-of-Service.

The fix backports the garbage collection improvements from Linux kernel 6.3 by bringing the IPv6 code closer to the IPv4 code, which does not have this issue.

Patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit?id=af6d10345ca76670c1b7c37799f0d5576ccef277