CVE-2026-98491 PUBLISHED

net: openvswitch: conntrack: avoid modifying shared unconfirmed ct entry

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

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

net: openvswitch: conntrack: avoid modifying shared unconfirmed ct entry

In a case where skb with an unconfirmed ct entry gets cloned, we may end up committing both but with different sets of extensions.

The series of events:

  1. The first clone wants to commit and runs the helpers wiring up the extension pointer into the expectation list.
  2. Then it looses the confirmation keeping the entry unconfirmed.
  3. Second clone now wants to commit labels and adds the new extension for that breaking the pointer in the expectation list causing UAF on the destruction path later.

While this is possible to trigger, there should be no practical network pipeline where committing both clones without modifications into the same zone is needed. So, let's just reset the entry in case for some reason we got an skb with a shared one during commit. This doesn't affect any known use cases, but avoids any potential problems with sharing and modification of the unconfirmed ct entry.

The fixes tag points to the introduction of helpers, since that's the main UAF trigger for the sharing.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to e0fa5ea434b7e8467ef3adc64e3858b1ca2a642d (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to 37e3c878b183a115f9a114067f9ef3b408ad27fb (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to 707c2dc77891a874f4e8c52c285a511079164ec8 (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to de41ee24f77b0fc45397db3e277cae2adbd43dfe (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to 55e5256adf3940e71802e2f749cacf81518726b0 (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to e2829ae5459ddb5fce526b2e84697edf6c0c3cef (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to 457e0df1b5711fbeb7ba1b6bfd826f5ef30e7e55 (excl.)
  • affected from cae3a2627520c3795b54533c5328b77af3405dbe to 26b2bd70d22457556e2fa01cbf1192cb1a94d619 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 4.3 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 4.3 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.271 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.222 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.189 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.158 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • 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