CVE-2022-50000: netfilter: flowtable: fix stuck flows on cleanup due to pending work

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2022-50000 is a high (CVSS 7.8) Use After Free vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 16.2% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 18-06-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: flowtable: fix stuck flows on cleanup due to pending work To clear the flow table on flow table free, the following sequence normally happens in order: 1) gc_step work is stopped to disable any further stats/del requests. 2) All flow table entries are set to teardown state. 3) Run gc_step which will queue HW del work for each flow table entry. 4) Waiting for the above del work to finish (flush). 5) Run gc_step again, deleting all entries from the flow table. 6) Flow table is freed. But if a flow table entry already has pending HW stats or HW add work step 3 will not queue HW del work (it will be skipped), step 4 will wait for the pending add/stats to finish, and step 5 will queue HW del work which might execute after freeing of the flow table. To fix the above, this patch flushes the pending work, then it sets the teardown flag to all flows in the flowtable and it forces a garbage collector run to queue work to remove the flows from hardware, then it flushes this new pending work and (finally) it forces another garbage collector run to remove the entry from the software flowtable. Stack trace: [47773.882335] BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in down_read+0x99/0x460 [47773.883634] Write of size 8 at addr ffff888103b45aa8 by task kworker/u20:6/543704 [47773.885634] CPU: 3 PID: 543704 Comm: kworker/u20:6 Not tainted 5.12.0-rc7+ #2 [47773.886745] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009) [47773.888438] Workqueue: nf_ft_offload_del flow_offload_work_handler [nf_flow_table] [47773.889727] Call Trace: [47773.890214] dump_stack+0xbb/0x107 [47773.890818] print_address_description.constprop.0+0x18/0x140 [47773.892990] kasan_report.cold+0x7c/0xd8 [47773.894459] kasan_check_range+0x145/0x1a0 [47773.895174] down_read+0x99/0x460 [47773.899706] nf_flow_offload_tuple+0x24f/0x3c0 [nf_flow_table] [47773.907137] flow_offload_work_handler+0x72d/0xbe0 [nf_flow_table] [47773.913372] process_one_work+0x8ac/0x14e0 [47773.921325] [47773.921325] Allocated by task 592159: [47773.922031] kasan_save_stack+0x1b/0x40 [47773.922730] __kasan_kmalloc+0x7a/0x90 [47773.923411] tcf_ct_flow_table_get+0x3cb/0x1230 [act_ct] [47773.924363] tcf_ct_init+0x71c/0x1156 [act_ct] [47773.925207] tcf_action_init_1+0x45b/0x700 [47773.925987] tcf_action_init+0x453/0x6b0 [47773.926692] tcf_exts_validate+0x3d0/0x600 [47773.927419] fl_change+0x757/0x4a51 [cls_flower] [47773.928227] tc_new_tfilter+0x89a/0x2070 [47773.936652] [47773.936652] Freed by task 543704: [47773.937303] kasan_save_stack+0x1b/0x40 [47773.938039] kasan_set_track+0x1c/0x30 [47773.938731] kasan_set_free_info+0x20/0x30 [47773.939467] __kasan_slab_free+0xe7/0x120 [47773.940194] slab_free_freelist_hook+0x86/0x190 [47773.941038] kfree+0xce/0x3a0 [47773.941644] tcf_ct_flow_table_cleanup_work Original patch description and stack trace by Paul Blakey.

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.