linux.git/include/net/netfilter, branch v6.6.132

netfilter: nft_set_pipapo: split gc into unlink and reclaim phase

2026-03-25T10:06:09+00:00

commit 9df95785d3d8302f7c066050117b04cd3c2048c2 upstream.

Yiming Qian reports Use-after-free in the pipapo set type:
  Under a large number of expired elements, commit-time GC can run for a very
  long time in a non-preemptible context, triggering soft lockup warnings and
  RCU stall reports (local denial of service).

We must split GC in an unlink and a reclaim phase.

We cannot queue elements for freeing until pointers have been swapped.
Expired elements are still exposed to both the packet path and userspace
dumpers via the live copy of the data structure.

call_rcu() does not protect us: dump operations or element lookups starting
after call_rcu has fired can still observe the free'd element, unless the
commit phase has made enough progress to swap the clone and live pointers
before any new reader has picked up the old version.

This a similar approach as done recently for the rbtree backend in commit
35f83a75529a ("netfilter: nft_set_rbtree: don't gc elements on insert").

Fixes: 3c4287f62044 ("nf_tables: Add set type for arbitrary concatenation of ranges")
Reported-by: Yiming Qian 
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

netfilter: nf_conncount: increase the connection clean up limit to 64

2026-03-04T12:19:45+00:00

[ Upstream commit 21d033e472735ecec677f1ae46d6740b5e47a4f3 ]

After the optimization to only perform one GC per jiffy, a new problem
was introduced. If more than 8 new connections are tracked per jiffy the
list won't be cleaned up fast enough possibly reaching the limit
wrongly.

In order to prevent this issue, only skip the GC if it was already
triggered during the same jiffy and the increment is lower than the
clean up limit. In addition, increase the clean up limit to 64
connections to avoid triggering GC too often and do more effective GCs.

This has been tested using a HTTP server and several
performance tools while having nft_connlimit/xt_connlimit or OVS limit
configured.

Output of slowhttptest + OVS limit at 52000 connections:

 slow HTTP test status on 340th second:
 initializing:        0
 pending:             432
 connected:           51998
 error:               0
 closed:              0
 service available:   YES

Fixes: d265929930e2 ("netfilter: nf_conncount: reduce unnecessary GC")
Reported-by: Aleksandra Rukomoinikova 
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter/b2064e7b-0776-4e14-adb6-c68080987471@k2.cloud/
Signed-off-by: Fernando Fernandez Mancera 
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_tables: avoid chain re-validation if possible

2026-01-17T15:30:01+00:00

[ Upstream commit 8e1a1bc4f5a42747c08130b8242ebebd1210b32f ]

Hamza Mahfooz reports cpu soft lock-ups in
nft_chain_validate():

 watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 27s! [iptables-nft-re:37547]
[..]
 RIP: 0010:nft_chain_validate+0xcb/0x110 [nf_tables]
[..]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_immediate_validate+0x36/0x50 [nf_tables]
  nft_chain_validate+0xc9/0x110 [nf_tables]
  nft_table_validate+0x6b/0xb0 [nf_tables]
  nf_tables_validate+0x8b/0xa0 [nf_tables]
  nf_tables_commit+0x1df/0x1eb0 [nf_tables]
[..]

Currently nf_tables will traverse the entire table (chain graph), starting
from the entry points (base chains), exploring all possible paths
(chain jumps).  But there are cases where we could avoid revalidation.

Consider:
1  input -> j2 -> j3
2  input -> j2 -> j3
3  input -> j1 -> j2 -> j3

Then the second rule does not need to revalidate j2, and, by extension j3,
because this was already checked during validation of the first rule.
We need to validate it only for rule 3.

This is needed because chain loop detection also ensures we do not exceed
the jump stack: Just because we know that j2 is cycle free, its last jump
might now exceed the allowed stack size.  We also need to update all
reachable chains with the new largest observed call depth.

Care has to be taken to revalidate even if the chain depth won't be an
issue: chain validation also ensures that expressions are not called from
invalid base chains.  For example, the masquerade expression can only be
called from NAT postrouting base chains.

Therefore we also need to keep record of the base chain context (type,
hooknum) and revalidate if the chain becomes reachable from a different
hook location.

Reported-by: Hamza Mahfooz 
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter-devel/20251118221735.GA5477@linuxonhyperv3.guj3yctzbm1etfxqx2vob5hsef.xx.internal.cloudapp.net/
Tested-by: Hamza Mahfooz 
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_tables: allow loads only when register is initialized

2026-01-11T14:21:46+00:00

[ Upstream commit 14fb07130c7ddd257e30079b87499b3f89097b09 ]

Reject rules where a load occurs from a register that has not seen a store
early in the same rule.

commit 4c905f6740a3 ("netfilter: nf_tables: initialize registers in
nft_do_chain()")
had to add a unconditional memset to the nftables register space to avoid
leaking stack information to userspace.

This memset shows up in benchmarks. After this change, this commit can
be reverted again.

Note that this breaks userspace compatibility, because theoretically
you can do

rule 1: reg2 := meta load iif, reg2 == 1 jump ...
rule 2: reg2 == 2 jump ... // read access with no store in this rule

... after this change this is rejected.

Neither nftables nor iptables-nft generate such rules, each rule is
always standalone.

This resuts in a small increase of nft_ctx structure by sizeof(long).

To cope with hypothetical rulesets like the example above one could emit
on-demand "reg[x] = 0" store when generating the datapath blob in
nf_tables_commit_chain_prepare().

A patch that does this is linked to below.

For now, lets disable this. In nf_tables, a rule is the smallest
unit that can be replaced from userspace, i.e. a hypothetical ruleset
that relies on earlier initialisations of registers can't be changed
at will as register usage would need to be coordinated.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter-devel/20240627135330.17039-4-fw@strlen.de/
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso
Stable-dep-of: a67fd55f6a09 ("netfilter: nf_tables: remove redundant chain validation on register store")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_tables: pass context structure to nft_parse_register_load

2026-01-11T14:21:46+00:00

[ Upstream commit 7ea0522ef81a335c2d3a0ab1c8a4fab9a23c4a03 ]

Mechanical transformation, no logical changes intended.

Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Stable-dep-of: a67fd55f6a09 ("netfilter: nf_tables: remove redundant chain validation on register store")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_conncount: rework API to use sk_buff directly

2026-01-11T14:21:34+00:00

[ Upstream commit be102eb6a0e7c03db00e50540622f4e43b2d2844 ]

When using nf_conncount infrastructure for non-confirmed connections a
duplicated track is possible due to an optimization introduced since
commit d265929930e2 ("netfilter: nf_conncount: reduce unnecessary GC").

In order to fix this introduce a new conncount API that receives
directly an sk_buff struct.  It fetches the tuple and zone and the
corresponding ct from it. It comes with both existing conncount variants
nf_conncount_count_skb() and nf_conncount_add_skb(). In addition remove
the old API and adjust all the users to use the new one.

This way, for each sk_buff struct it is possible to check if there is a
ct present and already confirmed. If so, skip the add operation.

Fixes: d265929930e2 ("netfilter: nf_conncount: reduce unnecessary GC")
Signed-off-by: Fernando Fernandez Mancera 
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_tables: drop unused 3rd argument from validate callback ops

2025-10-19T14:30:44+00:00

[ Upstream commit eaf9b2c875ece22768b78aa38da8b232e5de021b ]

Since commit a654de8fdc18 ("netfilter: nf_tables: fix chain dependency validation")
the validate() callback no longer needs the return pointer argument.

Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Stable-dep-of: f359b809d54c ("netfilter: nft_objref: validate objref and objrefmap expressions")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_conntrack: fix crash due to removal of uninitialised entry

2025-07-24T06:53:19+00:00

[ Upstream commit 2d72afb340657f03f7261e9243b44457a9228ac7 ]

A crash in conntrack was reported while trying to unlink the conntrack
entry from the hash bucket list:
    [exception RIP: __nf_ct_delete_from_lists+172]
    [..]
 #7 [ff539b5a2b043aa0] nf_ct_delete at ffffffffc124d421 [nf_conntrack]
 #8 [ff539b5a2b043ad0] nf_ct_gc_expired at ffffffffc124d999 [nf_conntrack]
 #9 [ff539b5a2b043ae0] __nf_conntrack_find_get at ffffffffc124efbc [nf_conntrack]
    [..]

The nf_conn struct is marked as allocated from slab but appears to be in
a partially initialised state:

 ct hlist pointer is garbage; looks like the ct hash value
 (hence crash).
 ct->status is equal to IPS_CONFIRMED|IPS_DYING, which is expected
 ct->timeout is 30000 (=30s), which is unexpected.

Everything else looks like normal udp conntrack entry.  If we ignore
ct->status and pretend its 0, the entry matches those that are newly
allocated but not yet inserted into the hash:
  - ct hlist pointers are overloaded and store/cache the raw tuple hash
  - ct->timeout matches the relative time expected for a new udp flow
    rather than the absolute 'jiffies' value.

If it were not for the presence of IPS_CONFIRMED,
__nf_conntrack_find_get() would have skipped the entry.

Theory is that we did hit following race:

cpu x 			cpu y			cpu z
 found entry E		found entry E
 E is expired		
 nf_ct_delete()
 return E to rcu slab
					init_conntrack
					E is re-inited,
					ct->status set to 0
					reply tuplehash hnnode.pprev
					stores hash value.

cpu y found E right before it was deleted on cpu x.
E is now re-inited on cpu z.  cpu y was preempted before
checking for expiry and/or confirm bit.

					->refcnt set to 1
					E now owned by skb
					->timeout set to 30000

If cpu y were to resume now, it would observe E as
expired but would skip E due to missing CONFIRMED bit.

					nf_conntrack_confirm gets called
					sets: ct->status |= CONFIRMED
					This is wrong: E is not yet added
					to hashtable.

cpu y resumes, it observes E as expired but CONFIRMED:
			
			nf_ct_expired()
			 -> yes (ct->timeout is 30s)
			confirmed bit set.

cpu y will try to delete E from the hashtable:
			nf_ct_delete() -> set DYING bit
			__nf_ct_delete_from_lists

Even this scenario doesn't guarantee a crash:
cpu z still holds the table bucket lock(s) so y blocks:

			wait for spinlock held by z

					CONFIRMED is set but there is no
					guarantee ct will be added to hash:
					"chaintoolong" or "clash resolution"
					logic both skip the insert step.
					reply hnnode.pprev still stores the
					hash value.

					unlocks spinlock
					return NF_DROP
			

In case CPU z does insert the entry into the hashtable, cpu y will unlink
E again right away but no crash occurs.

Without 'cpu y' race, 'garbage' hlist is of no consequence:
ct refcnt remains at 1, eventually skb will be free'd and E gets
destroyed via: nf_conntrack_put -> nf_conntrack_destroy -> nf_ct_destroy.

To resolve this, move the IPS_CONFIRMED assignment after the table
insertion but before the unlock.

Pablo points out that the confirm-bit-store could be reordered to happen
before hlist add resp. the timeout fixup, so switch to set_bit and
before_atomic memory barrier to prevent this.

It doesn't matter if other CPUs can observe a newly inserted entry right
before the CONFIRMED bit was set:

Such event cannot be distinguished from above "E is the old incarnation"
case: the entry will be skipped.

Also change nf_ct_should_gc() to first check the confirmed bit.

The gc sequence is:
 1. Check if entry has expired, if not skip to next entry
 2. Obtain a reference to the expired entry.
 3. Call nf_ct_should_gc() to double-check step 1.

nf_ct_should_gc() is thus called only for entries that already failed an
expiry check. After this patch, once the confirmed bit check passes
ct->timeout has been altered to reflect the absolute 'best before' date
instead of a relative time.  Step 3 will therefore not remove the entry.

Without this change to nf_ct_should_gc() we could still get this sequence:

 1. Check if entry has expired.
 2. Obtain a reference.
 3. Call nf_ct_should_gc() to double-check step 1:
    4 - entry is still observed as expired
    5 - meanwhile, ct->timeout is corrected to absolute value on other CPU
      and confirm bit gets set
    6 - confirm bit is seen
    7 - valid entry is removed again

First do check 6), then 4) so the gc expiry check always picks up either
confirmed bit unset (entry gets skipped) or expiry re-check failure for
re-inited conntrack objects.

This change cannot be backported to releases before 5.19. Without
commit 8a75a2c17410 ("netfilter: conntrack: remove unconfirmed list")
|= IPS_CONFIRMED line cannot be moved without further changes.

Cc: Razvan Cojocaru 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter-devel/20250627142758.25664-1-fw@strlen.de/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netfilter-devel/4239da15-83ff-4ca4-939d-faef283471bb@gmail.com/
Fixes: 1397af5bfd7d ("netfilter: conntrack: remove the percpu dying list")
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: flowtable: account for Ethernet header in nf_flow_pppoe_proto()

2025-07-17T16:35:19+00:00

[ Upstream commit 18cdb3d982da8976b28d57691eb256ec5688fad2 ]

syzbot found a potential access to uninit-value in nf_flow_pppoe_proto()

Blamed commit forgot the Ethernet header.

BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in nf_flow_offload_inet_hook+0x7e4/0x940 net/netfilter/nf_flow_table_inet.c:27
  nf_flow_offload_inet_hook+0x7e4/0x940 net/netfilter/nf_flow_table_inet.c:27
  nf_hook_entry_hookfn include/linux/netfilter.h:157 [inline]
  nf_hook_slow+0xe1/0x3d0 net/netfilter/core.c:623
  nf_hook_ingress include/linux/netfilter_netdev.h:34 [inline]
  nf_ingress net/core/dev.c:5742 [inline]
  __netif_receive_skb_core+0x4aff/0x70c0 net/core/dev.c:5837
  __netif_receive_skb_one_core net/core/dev.c:5975 [inline]
  __netif_receive_skb+0xcc/0xac0 net/core/dev.c:6090
  netif_receive_skb_internal net/core/dev.c:6176 [inline]
  netif_receive_skb+0x57/0x630 net/core/dev.c:6235
  tun_rx_batched+0x1df/0x980 drivers/net/tun.c:1485
  tun_get_user+0x4ee0/0x6b40 drivers/net/tun.c:1938
  tun_chr_write_iter+0x3e9/0x5c0 drivers/net/tun.c:1984
  new_sync_write fs/read_write.c:593 [inline]
  vfs_write+0xb4b/0x1580 fs/read_write.c:686
  ksys_write fs/read_write.c:738 [inline]
  __do_sys_write fs/read_write.c:749 [inline]

Reported-by: syzbot+bf6ed459397e307c3ad2@syzkaller.appspotmail.com
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/686bc073.a00a0220.c7b3.0086.GAE@google.com/T/#u
Fixes: 87b3593bed18 ("netfilter: flowtable: validate pppoe header")
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet 
Reviewed-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20250707124517.614489-1-edumazet@google.com
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

netfilter: nf_tables: allow clone callbacks to sleep

2025-03-22T19:50:50+00:00

commit fa23e0d4b756d25829e124d6b670a4c6bbd4bf7e upstream.

Sven Auhagen reports transaction failures with following error:
  ./main.nft:13:1-26: Error: Could not process rule: Cannot allocate memory
  percpu: allocation failed, size=16 align=8 atomic=1, atomic alloc failed, no space left

This points to failing pcpu allocation with GFP_ATOMIC flag.
However, transactions happen from user context and are allowed to sleep.

One case where we can call into percpu allocator with GFP_ATOMIC is
nft_counter expression.

Normally this happens from control plane, so this could use GFP_KERNEL
instead.  But one use case, element insertion from packet path,
needs to use GFP_ATOMIC allocations (nft_dynset expression).

At this time, .clone callbacks always use GFP_ATOMIC for this reason.

Add gfp_t argument to the .clone function and pass GFP_KERNEL or
GFP_ATOMIC flag depending on context, this allows all clone memory
allocations to sleep for the normal (transaction) case.

Cc: Sven Auhagen 
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal 
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman