CVE-2026-43026: netfilter: ctnetlink: zero expect NAT fields when CTA_EXPECT_NAT absent

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

netfilter: ctnetlink: zero expect NAT fields when CTAEXPECTNAT absent

ctnetlinkallocexpect() allocates expectations from a non-zeroing slab cache via nfctexpectalloc(). When CTAEXPECTNAT is not present in the netlink message, savedaddr and savedproto are never initialized. Stale data from a previous slab occupant can then be dumped to userspace by ctnetlinkexpdumpexpect(), which checks these fields to decide whether to emit CTAEXPECTNAT.

The safe sibling nfctexpectinit(), used by the packet path, explicitly zeroes these fields.

Zero savedaddr, savedproto and dir in the else branch, guarded by ISENABLED(CONFIGNFNAT) since these fields only exist when NAT is enabled.

Confirmed by priming the expect slab with NAT-bearing expectations, freeing them, creating a new expectation without CTAEXPECTNAT, and observing that the ctnetlink dump emits a spurious CTAEXPECTNAT containing stale data from the prior allocation.