Improper Locking Affecting kernel-livepatch-6.1.119-129.201 package, versions <0:1.0-0.amzn2023


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (6th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2023-KERNELLIVEPATCH61119129201-9521702
  • published27 Mar 2025
  • disclosed9 Nov 2024

Introduced: 9 Nov 2024

CVE-2024-50229  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-667  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2023 kernel-livepatch-6.1.119-129.201 to version 0:1.0-0.amzn2023 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2023-2025-802.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-livepatch-6.1.119-129.201 package and not the kernel-livepatch-6.1.119-129.201 package as distributed by Amazon-Linux. See How to fix? for Amazon-Linux:2023 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

nilfs2: fix potential deadlock with newly created symlinks

Syzbot reported that page_symlink(), called by nilfs_symlink(), triggers memory reclamation involving the filesystem layer, which can result in circular lock dependencies among the reader/writer semaphore nilfs->ns_segctor_sem, s_writers percpu_rwsem (intwrite) and the fs_reclaim pseudo lock.

This is because after commit 21fc61c73c39 ("don't put symlink bodies in pagecache into highmem"), the gfp flags of the page cache for symbolic links are overwritten to GFP_KERNEL via inode_nohighmem().

This is not a problem for symlinks read from the backing device, because the __GFP_FS flag is dropped after inode_nohighmem() is called. However, when a new symlink is created with nilfs_symlink(), the gfp flags remain overwritten to GFP_KERNEL. Then, memory allocation called from page_symlink() etc. triggers memory reclamation including the FS layer, which may call nilfs_evict_inode() or nilfs_dirty_inode(). And these can cause a deadlock if they are called while nilfs->ns_segctor_sem is held:

Fix this issue by dropping the __GFP_FS flag from the page cache GFP flags of newly created symlinks in the same way that nilfs_new_inode() and __nilfs_read_inode() do, as a workaround until we adopt nofs allocation scope consistently or improve the locking constraints.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1