Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-98490
Go to dashboardIn the Linux kernel's Open vSwitch connection tracking code, a helper can keep a stale pointer to a connection's extension area after that area is reallocated, and the stale pointer is later accessed. The sources do not state what an attacker gets beyond a use-after-free in kernel memory.
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.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
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: openvswitch: conntrack: 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.
This page as .md · .json · in your agent: get_signal("CVE-2026-98490")
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