What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-98873: netfilter: nf_conntrack_expect: zero at allocation time

• Severity: unknown
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-10-23 · updated 2026-10-26

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: nf_conntrack_expect: zero at allocation time There are occasional LLM hints wrt. leaking uninitialized data to userspace via ctnetlink. Just zero at allocation time, expectations are not frequently used these days. Intentionally keeps _init as-is because we could theoretically support re-init, so add the missing exp->dir there.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: before 5.10.271; before 5.15.222; before 6.1.189; before 6.6.158; before 6.12.111; before 6.18.53 — fixed in 5.10.271, 5.15.222, 6.1.189, 6.12.111, 6.18.53, 6.6.158

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.271, 5.15.222, 6.1.189, 6.12.111. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/241ccd2fed9051db443aadce248fc0ab30f55e97
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/39cb6ff947c16a576ea68c5f272e634acdcb0085
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/824397af7bfe14edad374c64253dae0187ca623d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/90545aa07a183887e9d72ce573c18e08f62e2c91
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9c11d7ea5ff4dbe162e79f00188814ef5483c295
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a39ecb856514274c80d0fac4d128dba6b266a8ed
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b7f3ee925aee9f1f547d539bc03c35433c238958

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