High [CVE-2026-72247] fix zone comparison in tuple dedup

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfilter: nf_conncount: fix zone comparison in tuple dedup The "already exists" dedup logic in __nf_conncount_add() decides whether a connection has already been counted and can be skipped instead of incrementing the connlimit count.

It compares the conntrack zone of a list entry with the zone of the connection being added using nf_ct_zone_id() and nf_ct_zone_equal(), passing conn->zone.dir or zone->dir as the direction argument. Those helpers take enum ip_conntrack_dir values: IP_CT_DIR_ORIGINAL is 0 and IP_CT_DIR_REPLY is 1.

However, zone->dir is a u8 bitmask: NF_CT_ZONE_DIR_ORIG is 1, NF_CT_ZONE_DIR_REPL is 2 and NF_CT_DEFAULT_ZONE_DIR is 3. Passing that bitmask as the enum direction shifts the meaning of every non-zero value.

An ORIG-only zone passes 1 and is tested as REPLY, while REPL-only and default zones pass 2 or 3 and test bits beyond the valid direction range.

In those cases nf_ct_zone_id() can fall back to NF_CT_DEFAULT_ZONE_ID instead of using the real zone id, so different zones can be treated as equal and dedup collapses to tuple equality alone. nf_conncount stores and compares the original-direction tuple for a connection.

Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9; Red Hat package: kernel-rt.