Bug 2444376 (CVE-2026-23231) - CVE-2026-23231 kernel: kernel: Privilege escalation or denial of service via use-after-free in nf_tables_addchain()
Summary: CVE-2026-23231 kernel: kernel: Privilege escalation or denial of service via ...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-23231
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-03-04 14:01 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-03-04 21:49 UTC (History)
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-03-04 14:01:20 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

netfilter: nf_tables: fix use-after-free in nf_tables_addchain()

nf_tables_addchain() publishes the chain to table->chains via
list_add_tail_rcu() (in nft_chain_add()) before registering hooks.
If nf_tables_register_hook() then fails, the error path calls
nft_chain_del() (list_del_rcu()) followed by nf_tables_chain_destroy()
with no RCU grace period in between.

This creates two use-after-free conditions:

 1) Control-plane: nf_tables_dump_chains() traverses table->chains
    under rcu_read_lock(). A concurrent dump can still be walking
    the chain when the error path frees it.

 2) Packet path: for NFPROTO_INET, nf_register_net_hook() briefly
    installs the IPv4 hook before IPv6 registration fails.  Packets
    entering nft_do_chain() via the transient IPv4 hook can still be
    dereferencing chain->blob_gen_X when the error path frees the
    chain.

Add synchronize_rcu() between nft_chain_del() and the chain destroy
so that all RCU readers -- both dump threads and in-flight packet
evaluation -- have finished before the chain is freed.


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