We received the following report via vendor-sec.
The issue is public.

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:32:18 +0200
From: Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
To: vendor-sec@lst.de
Subject: [vendor-sec] CAN-2004-0986: iptables and ip6tables fail to load ipt* kernel modules

Hi,

due to an uninitialised variable iptables and ip6tables fail to
load the proper kernel modules, which may result in rules not
implemented.  The fix is easy and I'm attaching the official
upstream correction.  This problem is already public through
our bugtracking system and netfilter-dev.

Regards,

	Joey

-- 
Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up, it is perfect.

Index: iptables.c
===================================================================
--- iptables.c	(revision 3243)
+++ iptables.c	(working copy)
 	int procfile;
 	char *ret;
 
+#define PROCFILE_BUFSIZ	1024
 	procfile = open(PROC_SYS_MODPROBE, O_RDONLY);
 	if (procfile < 0)
 		return NULL;
 
-	ret = malloc(1024);
+	ret = (char *) malloc(PROCFILE_BUFSIZ);
 	if (ret) {
-		switch (read(procfile, ret, 1024)) {
+		memset(ret, 0, PROCFILE_BUFSIZ);
+		switch (read(procfile, ret, PROCFILE_BUFSIZ)) {
 		case -1: goto fail;
-		case 1024: goto fail; /* Partial read.  Wierd */
+		case PROCFILE_BUFSIZ: goto fail; /* Partial read.  Wierd */
 		}
 		if (ret[strlen(ret)-1]=='\n') 
 			ret[strlen(ret)-1]=0;
Index: ip6tables.c
===================================================================
--- ip6tables.c	(revision 3243)
+++ ip6tables.c	(working copy)
 	int procfile;
 	char *ret;
 
+#define PROCFILE_BUFSIZ 1024
 	procfile = open(PROC_SYS_MODPROBE, O_RDONLY);
 	if (procfile < 0)
 		return NULL;
 
-	ret = malloc(1024);
+	ret = malloc(PROCFILE_BUFSIZ);
 	if (ret) {
-		switch (read(procfile, ret, 1024)) {
+		memset(ret, 0, PROCFILE_BUFSIZ);
+		switch (read(procfile, ret, PROCFILE_BUFSIZ)) {
 		case -1: goto fail;
-		case 1024: goto fail; /* Partial read.  Wierd */
+		case PROCFILE_BUFSIZ: goto fail; /* Partial read.  Wierd */
 		}
 		if (ret[strlen(ret)-1]=='\n') 
 			ret[strlen(ret)-1]=0;