CVE-2026-23392 PUBLISHED

netfilter: nf_tables: release flowtable after rcu grace period on error

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.01.2026 Published: 25.03.2026 Updated: 25.03.2026

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

netfilter: nf_tables: release flowtable after rcu grace period on error

Call synchronize_rcu() after unregistering the hooks from error path, since a hook that already refers to this flowtable can be already registered, exposing this flowtable to packet path and nfnetlink_hook control plane.

This error path is rare, it should only happen by reaching the maximum number hooks or by failing to set up to hardware offload, just call synchronize_rcu().

There is a check for already used device hooks by different flowtable that could result in EEXIST at this late stage. The hook parser can be updated to perform this check earlier to this error path really becomes rarely exercised.

Uncovered by KASAN reported as use-after-free from nfnetlink_hook path when dumping hooks.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to d2632de96ccb066e0131ad1494241b9c281c60b8 (excl.)
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to adee3436ccd29f1e514c028899e400cbc6d84065 (excl.)
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to 7e3955b282eae20d61c75e499c75eade51c20060 (excl.)
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to c8092edb9a11f20f95ccceeb9422b7dd0df337bd (excl.)
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to e78a2dcc7cfb87b64a631441ca7681492b347ef6 (excl.)
  • affected from 3b49e2e94e6ebb8b23d0955d9e898254455734f8 to d73f4b53aaaea4c95f245e491aa5eeb8a21874ce (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 4.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 4.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.167 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.130 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.78 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.20 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.10 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0-rc5 to * (incl.)

References