Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-98442
Go to dashboardIn the Linux kernel's act_ct traffic-control action, connection-tracking helpers store a raw pointer to an extension area that can be reallocated when more extensions are added, leaving a dangling pointer in the expectations list. Freeing that stale pointer later is a use-after-free, which the sources do not say is remotely triggerable or what exact impact an attacker gets.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
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Unknown from the sources.
Each row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/sched: act_ct: fix helper UAF due to extensions realloc
While calling the helpers, a raw pointer to the extensions area is wired into expectations list:
-> nf_ct_helper() -> helper->help() -> nf_ct_expect_related_report() -> nf_ct_expect_insert() -> hlist_add_head_rcu(&exp->lnode, &master_help->expectations)
In case the connection is not confirmed yet, more extensions can be added afterwards with *_ext_add() calls reallocating the extension space and leaving the now invalid pointer in the expectations list that is later accessed while removing the expectation.
Make sure that helpers are called at the end after all the other extensions are already added.
Note that the helper rejection now leaves the mark and labels set, but that's not different from how the NAT was handled before or how the mark and the labels were handled on confirmation failure. And there are no atomicity guarantees provided by the API anyway.
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