CVE-2022-49911
kernel: netfilter: ipset: enforce documented limit to prevent allocating huge memory
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · May 1, 2025
Updated · June 30, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
netfilter: ipset: enforce documented limit to prevent allocating huge memory
Daniel Xu reported that the hash:net,iface type of the ipset subsystem does not limit adding the same network with different interfaces to a set, which can lead to huge memory usage or allocation failure.
The quick reproducer is
$ ipset create ACL.IN.ALL_PERMIT hash:net,iface hashsize 1048576 timeout 0 $ for i in $(seq 0 100); do /sbin/ipset add ACL.IN.ALL_PERMIT 0.0.0.0/0,kaf_$i timeout 0 -exist; done
The backtrace when vmalloc fails:
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] ipset: vmalloc error: size 1073741848, exceeds total pages
<...>
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] Call Trace:
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] <TASK>
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] dump_stack_lvl+0x48/0x60
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] warn_alloc+0x155/0x180
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] __vmalloc_node_range+0x72a/0x760
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] ? hash_netiface4_add+0x7c0/0xb20
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] ? __kmalloc_large_node+0x4a/0x90
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] kvmalloc_node+0xa6/0xd0
[Tue Oct 25 00:13:08 2022] ? hash_netiface4_resize+0x99/0x710
<...>
The fix is to enforce the limit documented in the ipset(8) manpage:
The internal restriction of the hash:net,iface set type is that the same network prefix cannot be stored with more than 64 different interfaces in a single set.
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
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE not specified