CVE-2026-72418netfilter: nf_conncount: prevent connlimit drops for early confirmed ct

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: nf_conncount: prevent connlimit drops for early confirmed ct Commit 69894e5b4c5e ("netfilter: nft_connlimit: update the count if add was skipped") introduced a regression where packets for valid connections are dropped when using connlimit for soft-limiting scenarios. The issue occurs when a new connection reuses a socket currently in the TIME_WAIT state. In this scenario, the connection tracking entry is evaluated as already confirmed. Previously, __nf_conncount_add() assumed that if a connection was confirmed and did not originate from the loopback interface, it should skip the addition and return -EEXIST. Skipping the addition triggers a garbage collection run that cleans up the TIME_WAIT connection. Consequently, the active connection count drops to 0, which xt_connlimit mishandles, leading to the false rejection of the perfectly valid new connection. Fix this by replacing the interface check with protocol-agnostic state checks. We now skip the tree insertion and preserve the lockless garbage collection optimization only if the connection is IPS_ASSURED. This allows early-confirmed setup packets (such as reused TIME_WAIT sockets or locally generated SYN-ACKs) to be properly evaluated and counted without falsely dropping. The goto check_connections path is maintained to ensure these setup packets are deduplicated correctly. This has been tested with slowhttptest and HTTP server configured locally to ensure we are not breaking soft-limiting scenarios for local or external connections. In addition, it was tested with a OVS zone limit too.

Affected packages & fixed versions

Affected products (as reported)

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/000ac6830b56499d6b65fd91486ce6689eb02be4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cbe2d14a7c5b1fc71821fbfee5c4963917411e92
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3793d24de224943e0a6016bbeffb6f5c4cea2e3d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abef7f817217fcb62c11821d6b895063eadb2828
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ebfe8249ba79e4ff0f1e3aad8787b992ef27f026
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/329f2626ee5cb8fafdf6b58b624311529c57cb45
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be52572c6d55f677ba76869d3c63805c0d4891a3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c8b6f36f766991e3ebebec6596daee4b04dcbc49