Re: [PATCH net 4/6] net/sched: act_ct: avoid modifying shared unconfirmed ct entry

On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 10:57 AM Ilya Maximets [off-list ref] wrote:

In a case where skb with an unconfirmed ct entry gets cloned, we may
end up processing both again but with different sets of extensions.

The series of events:

 1. The first clone wants to commit and runs the helpers wiring up
    the extension pointer into the expectation list.
 2. Then it looses the confirmation keeping the entry unconfirmed.
 3. Second clone now wants to commit labels or run NAT and adds the
    new extension for that breaking the pointer in the expectation
    list causing UAF on the destruction path later.

While this is possible to trigger, there should be no practical
network pipeline where we need to process both clones without
modifications in the same zone.  So, let's just reset the entry in
case for some reason we got an skb with a shared one.  This doesn't
affect any known use cases, but avoids any potential problems with
sharing and modification of the unconfirmed ct entry.

Unlike openvswitch module, act_ct allows for NAT without commit.
Changing that would be a uAPI break.  So, act_ct needs to reset on NAT
regardless of the commit flag to avoid reallocation of the extension
space.  This, however, doesn't really change the picture for sensible
networking cases as there should be no need to run the same packet
twice (before and after the clone) through conntrack without packet
header or zone changes and without commit.

The fixes tag points to the introduction of helpers, since that's the
main UAF trigger for the sharing.

Fixes: a21b06e73191 ("net: sched: add helper support in act_ct")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Reported-by: Axel Mierczuk <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Ilya Maximets <i.maximets@ovn.org>

Reviewed-by: Xin Long <lucien.xin@gmail.com>