HIGH
netfilter ConnCount Resource Exhaustion
CVE-2026-45860
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
KernelScan AI7.5HIGH
01Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: nf_conncount: increase the connection clean up limit to 64 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
02KernelScan AI Analysis
Risk summary
Systems using netfilter connection limiting (nft_connlimit, xt_connlimit, or OVS connection limits) may incorrectly reject legitimate connections when connection rates exceed 8 per jiffy. This can cause denial of service for network services that rely on connection tracking limits for protection against resource exhaustion attacks.
Vulnerability analysis
The root cause is in the garbage collection optimization introduced in commit d265929930e2. The code skips GC if it was already performed in the same jiffy, but with a hardcoded limit of 8 connections, high connection rates can cause the connection list to grow faster than it's cleaned up. This leads to premature triggering of connection limits. The fix increases the cleanup threshold from 8 to 64 connections and adds tracking of list size at last GC to make the skipping logic more intelligent. Attack surface is any system with netfilter connection limiting enabled, reachable via network traffic.
03Fix Versions
| Branch | Fixed in | Patch commit |
|---|---|---|
| 5.10 | 5.10.252 | a5c9e14e0e89 |
| 5.15 | 5.15.202 | 13eede458fdf |
| 6.1 | 6.1.165 | fa85432d58c8 |
| 6.12 | 6.12.75 | 3d0994ed0aa1 |
| 6.18 | 6.18.14 | 6e5fa7add3e7 |
| 6.19 | 6.19.4 | 0af0812baf2d |
| 6.6 | 6.6.128 | 0792ad077d77 |
| mainline | 7.0 | 21d033e47273 |