CVE-2025-38721

About vulnerability

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

netfilter: ctnetlink: fix refcount leak on table dump

There is a reference count leak in ctnetlink_dump_table(): if (res < 0) { nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general); // HERE cb->args[1] = (unsigned long)ct; …

While its very unlikely, its possible that ct == last. If this happens, then the refcount of ct was already incremented. This 2nd increment is never undone.

This prevents the conntrack object from being released, which in turn keeps prevents cnet->count from dropping back to 0.

This will then block the netns dismantle (or conntrack rmmod) as nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list() will wait forever.

This can be reproduced by running conntrack_resize.sh selftest in a loop. It takes ~20 minutes for me on a preemptible kernel on average before I see a runaway kworker spinning in nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list.

One fix would to change this to: if (res < 0) { if (ct != last) nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general);

But this reference counting isn’t needed in the first place. We can just store a cookie value instead.

A followup patch will do the same for ctnetlink_exp_dump_table, it looks to me as if this has the same problem and like ctnetlink_dump_table, we only need a ‘skip hint’, not the actual object so we can apply the same cookie strategy there as well.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 5.14.0 (+15 more)

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

netfilter: ctnetlink: fix refcount leak on table dump

There is a reference count leak in ctnetlink_dump_table(): if (res < 0) { nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general); // HERE cb->args[1] = (unsigned long)ct; …

While its very unlikely, its possible that ct == last. If this happens, then the refcount of ct was already incremented. This 2nd increment is never undone.

This prevents the conntrack object from being released, which in turn keeps prevents cnet->count from dropping back to 0.

This will then block the netns dismantle (or conntrack rmmod) as nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list() will wait forever.

This can be reproduced by running conntrack_resize.sh selftest in a loop. It takes ~20 minutes for me on a preemptible kernel on average before I see a runaway kworker spinning in nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list.

One fix would to change this to: if (res < 0) { if (ct != last) nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general);

But this reference counting isn’t needed in the first place. We can just store a cookie value instead.

A followup patch will do the same for ctnetlink_exp_dump_table, it looks to me as if this has the same problem and like ctnetlink_dump_table, we only need a ‘skip hint’, not the actual object so we can apply the same cookie strategy there as well.