CVE-2025-38721 — netfilter: ctnetlink: fix refcount leak on table dump

Affected: Linux, Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100, Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 CPU 1518-4 PN/DP MFP, Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 CPU 1518F-4 PN/DP MFP, Siemens SIPLUS S7-1500 CPU 1518-4 PN/DP MFP

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

netfilter: ctnetlink: fix refcount leak on table dump

There is a reference count leak in ctnetlink_dump_table(): if (res < 0) { nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general); // HERE cb->args[1] = (unsigned long)ct; ...

While its very unlikely, its possible that ct == last. If this happens, then the refcount of ct was already incremented. This 2nd increment is never undone.

This prevents the conntrack object from being released, which in turn keeps prevents cnet->count from dropping back to 0.

This will then block the netns dismantle (or conntrack rmmod) as nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list() will wait forever.

This can be reproduced by running conntrack_resize.sh selftest in a loop. It takes ~20 minutes for me on a preemptible kernel on average before I see a runaway kworker spinning in nf_conntrack_cleanup_net_list.

One fix would to change this to: if (res < 0) { if (ct != last) nf_conntrack_get(&ct->ct_general);

But this reference counting isn't needed in the first place. We can just store a cookie value instead.

A followup patch will do the same for ctnetlink_exp_dump_table, it looks to me as if this has the same problem and like ctnetlink_dump_table, we only need a 'skip hint', not the actual object so we can apply the same cookie strategy there as well.

USN-7909-1 — linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-in…

Affected: Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-aws-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-gcp-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-hwe-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-ibm-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-intel-iotg-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS: linux-oracle-5.15, Ubuntu:22.04:LTS: linux, Ubuntu:22.04:LTS: linux-aws and 8 more

Several security issues were discovered in the Linux kernel. An attacker could possibly use these to compromise the system. This update corrects flaws in the following subsystems: - ARM32 architecture; - ARM64 architecture; - MIPS architecture; - PowerPC architecture; - RISC-V architecture; - S390 architecture; - x86 architecture; - Block layer subsystem; - ACPI drivers; - ATM drivers; - DRBD Distributed Replicated Block Device drivers; - Bus devices; - Clock framework and drivers; - Data acquisition framework and drivers; - Hardware crypto device drivers; - Device frequency scaling framework; - Buffer Sharing and Synchronization framework; - DMA engine subsystem; - ARM SCMI message protocol; - GPU drivers; - HID subsystem; - Hardware monitoring drivers; - I2C subsystem; - I3C subsystem; - IIO subsystem; - InfiniBand drivers; - Input Device core drivers; - IOMMU subsystem; - Media drivers; - Network drivers; - Mellanox network drivers; - PCI subsystem; - PCCARD (PCMCIA/CardBus) bus subsystem; - PHY drivers; - Power supply drivers; - Voltage and Current Regulator drivers; - SCSI subsystem; - ASPEED SoC drivers; - QCOM SoC drivers; - small TFT LCD display modules; - Trusted Execution Environment drivers; - TTY drivers; - UFS subsystem; - USB core drivers; - DesignWare USB3 driver; - USB Gadget drivers; - Framebuffer layer; - BTRFS file system; - File systems infrastructure; - EF…

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CVE-2025-38721 — netfilter: ctnetlink: fix refcount leak on table dump

USN-7909-1 — linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-in…