CVE-2026-98484 PUBLISHED

netfilter: nf_tables: skip expired catchall elements on insert and delete

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 18.10.2026 Updated: 18.10.2026

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

netfilter: nf_tables: skip expired catchall elements on insert and delete

nft_setelem_catchall_insert() looks up duplicates with nft_set_elem_active() only, while nft_set_catchall_lookup() and the dump path additionally skip expired elements.

Once a catchall element with a timeout expires, this predicate drift makes it invisible to userspace dumps, yet it still blocks re-insertion: with NLM_F_EXCL the request fails with -EEXIST, and without it the request reports success but silently inserts nothing. The stale entry only goes away when the (user-tunable) gc interval elapses, so the catchall rule may silently stop matching for an arbitrarily long time after its first expiration.

The delete path shows the same drift: nft_setelem_catchall_deactivate() picks the first active-next entry in the catchall list, so with an expired entry still pending GC it retires the stale entry instead of the fresh one, and it deactivates an element that userspace no longer sees instead of failing with -ENOENT.

Align both walks with the lookup and dump predicates: only an element that is active and not expired counts as a duplicate or delete candidate, using the per-netns timestamp taken at transaction start, in line with the set backend .insert/.deactivate and catchall GC sync paths.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from aaa31047a6d25da0fa101da1ed544e1247949b40 to 2f07da3881525f7cbfed1ced2796c71a201505b9 (excl.)
  • affected from aaa31047a6d25da0fa101da1ed544e1247949b40 to 12cf803edfffef96f6415f0b5dbc7ec88842ea0f (excl.)
  • affected from aaa31047a6d25da0fa101da1ed544e1247949b40 to 4fb8b1ccc475651e480e509de126bb9ce7f3cff9 (excl.)
  • affected from aaa31047a6d25da0fa101da1ed544e1247949b40 to 70194dc37670bd08e44b471389861cc01bd3a3c9 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.13 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.13 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.112 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.55 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.9 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc5 to * (incl.)

References