CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98622

Low risk· EPSS 7%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.18%

7th percentile - higher than 7% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel net/sched act_ct module, flow_offload_alloc() returns NULL when the conntrack entry is dying or when GFP_ATOMIC allocation fails, both expected under load. This path issued a WARN, so with panic_on_warn=1 an unprivileged user could panic the box by racing a conntrack flush against a 'tc ... action ct commit' classifier.

Risk Assessment

An unprivileged local user can trigger a system panic (denial of service) on configurations with panic_on_warn=1.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version that removes the WARN for benign flow_offload_alloc() failures while preserving the existing goto err_alloc behavior.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/sched: act_ct: don't WARN on benign flow_offload_alloc() failure flow_offload_alloc() returns NULL when the conntrack entry is dying (e.g. raced with a conntrack flush) or when the GFP_ATOMIC allocation fails; both are expected under load and neither is a kernel bug. This path runs from softirq on every committed packet, so with panic_on_warn=1 an unprivileged user can panic the box just by racing a conntrack flush against a `tc ... action ct commit` classifier. Reproduced with a custom repro under QEMU: a small, fixed set of UDP flows through `tc filter ... action ct commit` on lo, raced against threads flooding bare ctnetlink CT_DELETE (flush) requests. Hits WARNING: net/sched/act_ct.c:437 (tcf_ct_flow_table_add(), inlined into tcf_ct_act() in this build) within ~15s on the unpatched kernel; same setup is clean on the patched kernel. The fix itself is behavior-preserving: both branches already did `goto err_alloc` before and after, only the WARN is removed.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS