Message-ID: <2025072812-CVE-2025-38472-fa6d@gregkh>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:22:15 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38472: netfilter: nf_conntrack: fix crash due to removal of uninitialised entry

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

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

netfilter: nf_conntrack: fix crash due to removal of uninitialised entry

A crash in conntrack was reported while trying to unlink the conntrack
entry from the hash bucket list:
    [exception RIP: __nf_ct_delete_from_lists+172]
    [..]
 #7 [ff539b5a2b043aa0] nf_ct_delete at ffffffffc124d421 [nf_conntrack]
 #8 [ff539b5a2b043ad0] nf_ct_gc_expired at ffffffffc124d999 [nf_conntrack]
 #9 [ff539b5a2b043ae0] __nf_conntrack_find_get at ffffffffc124efbc [nf_conntrack]
    [..]

The nf_conn struct is marked as allocated from slab but appears to be in
a partially initialised state:

 ct hlist pointer is garbage; looks like the ct hash value
 (hence crash).
 ct->status is equal to IPS_CONFIRMED|IPS_DYING, which is expected
 ct->timeout is 30000 (=30s), which is unexpected.

Everything else looks like normal udp conntrack entry.  If we ignore
ct->status and pretend its 0, the entry matches those that are newly
allocated but not yet inserted into the hash:
  - ct hlist pointers are overloaded and store/cache the raw tuple hash
  - ct->timeout matches the relative time expected for a new udp flow
    rather than the absolute 'jiffies' value.

If it were not for the presence of IPS_CONFIRMED,
__nf_conntrack_find_get() would have skipped the entry.

Theory is that we did hit following race:

cpu x 			cpu y			cpu z
 found entry E		found entry E
 E is expired		<preemption>
 nf_ct_delete()
 return E to rcu slab
					init_conntrack
					E is re-inited,
					ct->status set to 0
					reply tuplehash hnnode.pprev
					stores hash value.

cpu y found E right before it was deleted on cpu x.
E is now re-inited on cpu z.  cpu y was preempted before
checking for expiry and/or confirm bit.

					->refcnt set to 1
					E now owned by skb
					->timeout set to 30000

If cpu y were to resume now, it would observe E as
expired but would skip E due to missing CONFIRMED bit.

					nf_conntrack_confirm gets called
					sets: ct->status |= CONFIRMED
					This is wrong: E is not yet added
					to hashtable.

cpu y resumes, it observes E as expired but CONFIRMED:
			<resumes>
			nf_ct_expired()
			 -> yes (ct->timeout is 30s)
			confirmed bit set.

cpu y will try to delete E from the hashtable:
			nf_ct_delete() -> set DYING bit
			__nf_ct_delete_from_lists

Even this scenario doesn't guarantee a crash:
cpu z still holds the table bucket lock(s) so y blocks:

			wait for spinlock held by z

					CONFIRMED is set but there is no
					guarantee ct will be added to hash:
					"chaintoolong" or "clash resolution"
					logic both skip the insert step.
					reply hnnode.pprev still stores the
					hash value.

					unlocks spinlock
					return NF_DROP
			<unblocks, then
			 crashes on hlist_nulls_del_rcu pprev>

In case CPU z does insert the entry into the hashtable, cpu y will unlink
E again right away but no crash occurs.

Without 'cpu y' race, 'garbage' hlist is of no consequence:
ct refcnt remains at 1, eventually skb will be free'd and E gets
destroyed via: nf_conntrack_put -> nf_conntrack_destroy -> nf_ct_destroy.

To resolve this, move the IPS_CONFIRMED assignment after the table
insertion but before the unlock.

Pablo points out that the confirm-bit-store could be reordered to happen
before hlist add resp. the timeout fixup, so switch to set_bit and
before_atomic memory barrier to prevent this.

It doesn't matter if other CPUs can observe a newly inserted entry right
before the CONFIRMED bit was set:

Such event cannot be distinguished from above "E is the old incarnation"
case: the entry will be skipped.

Also change nf_ct_should_gc() to first check the confirmed bit.

The gc sequence is:
 1. Check if entry has expired, if not skip to next entry
 2. Obtain a reference to the expired entry.
 3. Call nf_ct_should_gc() to double-check step 1.

nf_ct_should_gc() is thus called only for entries that already failed an
expiry check. After this patch, once the confirmed bit check passes
ct->timeout has been altered to reflect the absolute 'best before' date
instead of a relative time.  Step 3 will therefore not remove the entry.

Without this change to nf_ct_should_gc() we could still get this sequence:

 1. Check if entry has expired.
 2. Obtain a reference.
 3. Call nf_ct_should_gc() to double-check step 1:
    4 - entry is still observed as expired
    5 - meanwhile, ct->timeout is corrected to absolute value on other CPU
      and confirm bit gets set
    6 - confirm bit is seen
    7 - valid entry is removed again

First do check 6), then 4) so the gc expiry check always picks up either
confirmed bit unset (entry gets skipped) or expiry re-check failure for
re-inited conntrack objects.

This change cannot be backported to releases before 5.19. Without
commit 8a75a2c17410 ("netfilter: conntrack: remove unconfirmed list")
|= IPS_CONFIRMED line cannot be moved without further changes.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38472 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 1397af5bfd7d32b0cf2adb70a78c9a9e8f11d912 and fixed in 6.1.147 with commit a47ef874189d47f934d0809ae738886307c0ea22
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 1397af5bfd7d32b0cf2adb70a78c9a9e8f11d912 and fixed in 6.6.100 with commit 76179961c423cd698080b5e4d5583cf7f4fcdde9
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 1397af5bfd7d32b0cf2adb70a78c9a9e8f11d912 and fixed in 6.12.40 with commit fc38c249c622ff5e3011b8845fd49dbfd9289afc
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 1397af5bfd7d32b0cf2adb70a78c9a9e8f11d912 and fixed in 6.15.8 with commit 938ce0e8422d3793fe30df2ed0e37f6bc0598379
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 1397af5bfd7d32b0cf2adb70a78c9a9e8f11d912 and fixed in 6.16 with commit 2d72afb340657f03f7261e9243b44457a9228ac7
	Issue introduced in 5.18.13 with commit 594cea2c09f7cd440d1ee1c4547d5bc6a646b0e4

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-38472
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	include/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack.h
	net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a47ef874189d47f934d0809ae738886307c0ea22
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/76179961c423cd698080b5e4d5583cf7f4fcdde9
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fc38c249c622ff5e3011b8845fd49dbfd9289afc
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/938ce0e8422d3793fe30df2ed0e37f6bc0598379
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2d72afb340657f03f7261e9243b44457a9228ac7

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