CVE Database›CVE-2023-7192

CVE-2023-7192

kernel: refcount leak in ctnetlink_create_conntrack()

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Severity

Moderate

Red Hat Product Security

5.5

CVSS 3.1

Review impact separately from score.

Published · February 10, 2023

Updated · August 7, 2026

Description

A memory leak problem was found in ctnetlink_create_conntrack in net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c in the Linux Kernel. This issue may allow a local attacker with CAP_NET_ADMIN privileges to cause a denial of service (DoS) attack due to a refcount overflow.

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

Triggering this issue 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.

Alternatively, skip loading the affected netfilter module (i.e., nf_conntrack_netlink) onto the system until we have a fix available. This can be done by a blacklist mechanism which will ensure the driver is not loaded at boot time.

How do I blacklist a kernel module to prevent it from loading automatically?
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 

CVSS / CWE

CVSS 3.1 · 5.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWE-401 · Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime