NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting perf package, versions <0:6.1.140-154.222.amzn2023


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.03% (8th percentile)

Do your applications use this vulnerable package?

In a few clicks we can analyze your entire application and see what components are vulnerable in your application, and suggest you quick fixes.

Test your applications

Snyk Learn

Learn about NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerabilities in an interactive lesson.

Start learning
  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2023-PERF-11477851
  • published5 Aug 2025
  • disclosed1 May 2025

Introduced: 1 May 2025

CVE-2025-37772  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2023 perf to version 0:6.1.140-154.222.amzn2023 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2023-2025-1050.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream perf package and not the perf 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:

RDMA/cma: Fix workqueue crash in cma_netevent_work_handler

struct rdma_cm_id has member "struct work_struct net_work" that is reused for enqueuing cma_netevent_work_handler()s onto cma_wq.

Below crash[1] can occur if more than one call to cma_netevent_callback() occurs in quick succession, which further enqueues cma_netevent_work_handler()s for the same rdma_cm_id, overwriting any previously queued work-item(s) that was just scheduled to run i.e. there is no guarantee the queued work item may run between two successive calls to cma_netevent_callback() and the 2nd INIT_WORK would overwrite the 1st work item (for the same rdma_cm_id), despite grabbing id_table_lock during enqueue.

Also drgn analysis [2] indicates the work item was likely overwritten.

Fix this by moving the INIT_WORK() to __rdma_create_id(), so that it doesn't race with any existing queue_work() or its worker thread.

[1] Trimmed crash stack:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008 kworker/u256:6 ... 6.12.0-0... Workqueue: cma_netevent_work_handler [rdma_cm] (rdma_cm) RIP: 0010:process_one_work+0xba/0x31a Call Trace: worker_thread+0x266/0x3a0 kthread+0xcf/0x100 ret_from_fork+0x31/0x50 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30

[2] drgn crash analysis:

>>> trace = prog.crashed_thread().stack_trace() >>> trace (0) crash_setup_regs (./arch/x86/include/asm/kexec.h:111:15) (1) __crash_kexec (kernel/crash_core.c:122:4) (2) panic (kernel/panic.c:399:3) (3) oops_end (arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c:382:3) ... (8) process_one_work (kernel/workqueue.c:3168:2) (9) process_scheduled_works (kernel/workqueue.c:3310:3) (10) worker_thread (kernel/workqueue.c:3391:4) (11) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:389:9)

Line workqueue.c:3168 for this kernel version is in process_one_work(): 3168 strscpy(worker->desc, pwq->wq->name, WORKER_DESC_LEN);

>>> trace[8]["work"] *(struct work_struct *)0xffff92577d0a21d8 = { .data = (atomic_long_t){ .counter = (s64)536870912, <=== Note }, .entry = (struct list_head){ .next = (struct list_head *)0xffff924d075924c0, .prev = (struct list_head *)0xffff924d075924c0, }, .func = (work_func_t)cma_netevent_work_handler+0x0 = 0xffffffffc2cec280, }

Suspicion is that pwq is NULL: >>> trace[8]["pwq"] (struct pool_workqueue *)<absent>

In process_one_work(), pwq is assigned from: struct pool_workqueue *pwq = get_work_pwq(work);

and get_work_pwq() is: static struct pool_workqueue *get_work_pwq(struct work_struct *work) { unsigned long data = atomic_long_read(&work->data);

 if (data &amp; WORK_STRUCT_PWQ)
     return work_struct_pwq(data);
 else
     return NULL;

}

WORK_STRUCT_PWQ is 0x4: >>> print(repr(prog['WORK_STRUCT_PWQ'])) Object(prog, 'enum work_flags', value=4)

But work->data is 536870912 which is 0x20000000. So, get_work_pwq() returns NULL and we crash in process_one_work(): 3168 strscpy(worker->desc, pwq->wq->name, WORKER_DESC_LEN);

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1