CVE-2022-32250
kernel: a use-after-free write in the netfilter subsystem can lead to privilege escalation to root
Severity
ImportantRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · May 31, 2022
Updated · October 15, 2026
Description
A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's Netfilter subsystem in net/netfilter/nf_tables_api.c. This flaw allows a local attacker with user access to cause a privilege escalation issue.
Statement
The latest kernel in RHCOS is kernel-4.18.0-305.49.1.el8 which does not contain the vulnerable code and is not affected, also OCP v4.9 or earlier are not affected.
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
In order to trigger the issue, it requires the ability to create user/net namespaces.
On non-containerized deployments of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, you can disable user namespaces by setting user.max_user_namespaces to 0:
echo "user.max_user_namespaces=0" > /etc/sysctl.d/userns.conf
sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/userns.conf
On containerized deployments, such as Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, do not use this mitigation as the functionality is needed to be enabled.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-416 · Use After Free