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Unsynchronized Access to Shared Data in a Multithreaded Context Affecting kernel-tools package, versions <0:4.14.238-182.421.amzn2

Severity

 Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (13th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2-KERNELTOOLS-8539722
  • published20 Dec 2024
  • disclosed21 May 2024
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Introduced: 21 May 2024

CVE-2021-47256  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-567  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2 kernel-tools to version 0:4.14.238-182.421.amzn2 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2-2021-1685.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-tools package and not the kernel-tools package as distributed by Amazon-Linux. See How to fix? for Amazon-Linux:2 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

mm/memory-failure: make sure wait for page writeback in memory_failure

Our syzkaller trigger the "BUG_ON(!list_empty(&inode->i_wb_list))" in clear_inode:

kernel BUG at fs/inode.c:519! Internal error: Oops - BUG: 0 [#1] SMP Modules linked in: Process syz-executor.0 (pid: 249, stack limit = 0x00000000a12409d7) CPU: 1 PID: 249 Comm: syz-executor.0 Not tainted 4.19.95 Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT) pstate: 80000005 (Nzcv daif -PAN -UAO) pc : clear_inode+0x280/0x2a8 lr : clear_inode+0x280/0x2a8 Call trace: clear_inode+0x280/0x2a8 ext4_clear_inode+0x38/0xe8 ext4_free_inode+0x130/0xc68 ext4_evict_inode+0xb20/0xcb8 evict+0x1a8/0x3c0 iput+0x344/0x460 do_unlinkat+0x260/0x410 __arm64_sys_unlinkat+0x6c/0xc0 el0_svc_common+0xdc/0x3b0 el0_svc_handler+0xf8/0x160 el0_svc+0x10/0x218 Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

A crash dump of this problem show that someone called __munlock_pagevec to clear page LRU without lock_page: do_mmap -> mmap_region -> do_munmap -> munlock_vma_pages_range -> __munlock_pagevec.

As a result memory_failure will call identify_page_state without wait_on_page_writeback. And after truncate_error_page clear the mapping of this page. end_page_writeback won't call sb_clear_inode_writeback to clear inode->i_wb_list. That will trigger BUG_ON in clear_inode!

Fix it by checking PageWriteback too to help determine should we skip wait_on_page_writeback.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1