Race Condition Affecting kernel-rt-kvm package, versions <0:4.18.0-553.8.1.rt7.349.el8_10


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on CentOS security rating

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS
    0.05% (17th percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-CENTOS8-KERNELRTKVM-6366887
  • published 3 Mar 2024
  • disclosed 1 Mar 2024

How to fix?

Upgrade Centos:8 kernel-rt-kvm to version 0:4.18.0-553.8.1.rt7.349.el8_10 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-rt-kvm package and not the kernel-rt-kvm package as distributed by Centos. See How to fix? for Centos:8 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

ipc/mqueue, msg, sem: avoid relying on a stack reference past its expiry

do_mq_timedreceive calls wq_sleep with a stack local address. The sender (do_mq_timedsend) uses this address to later call pipelined_send.

This leads to a very hard to trigger race where a do_mq_timedreceive call might return and leave do_mq_timedsend to rely on an invalid address, causing the following crash:

RIP: 0010:wake_q_add_safe+0x13/0x60 Call Trace: __x64_sys_mq_timedsend+0x2a9/0x490 do_syscall_64+0x80/0x680 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9 RIP: 0033:0x7f5928e40343

The race occurs as:

  1. do_mq_timedreceive calls wq_sleep with the address of struct ext_wait_queue on function stack (aliased as ewq_addr here) - it holds a valid struct ext_wait_queue * as long as the stack has not been overwritten.

  2. ewq_addr gets added to info->e_wait_q[RECV].list in wq_add, and do_mq_timedsend receives it via wq_get_first_waiter(info, RECV) to call __pipelined_op.

  3. Sender calls __pipelined_op::smp_store_release(&this->state, STATE_READY). Here is where the race window begins. (this is ewq_addr.)

  4. If the receiver wakes up now in do_mq_timedreceive::wq_sleep, it will see state == STATE_READY and break.

  5. do_mq_timedreceive returns, and ewq_addr is no longer guaranteed to be a struct ext_wait_queue * since it was on do_mq_timedreceive's stack. (Although the address may not get overwritten until another function happens to touch it, which means it can persist around for an indefinite time.)

  6. do_mq_timedsend::__pipelined_op() still believes ewq_addr is a struct ext_wait_queue *, and uses it to find a task_struct to pass to the wake_q_add_safe call. In the lucky case where nothing has overwritten ewq_addr yet, ewq_addr-&gt;task is the right task_struct. In the unlucky case, __pipelined_op::wake_q_add_safe gets handed a bogus address as the receiver's task_struct causing the crash.

do_mq_timedsend::__pipelined_op() should not dereference this after setting STATE_READY, as the receiver counterpart is now free to return. Change __pipelined_op to call wake_q_add_safe on the receiver's task_struct returned by get_task_struct, instead of dereferencing this which sits on the receiver's stack.

As Manfred pointed out, the race potentially also exists in ipc/msg.c::expunge_all and ipc/sem.c::wake_up_sem_queue_prepare. Fix those in the same way.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
Expand this section

Red Hat

5.5 medium
  • Attack Vector (AV)
    Local
  • Attack Complexity (AC)
    Low
  • Privileges Required (PR)
    Low
  • User Interaction (UI)
    None
  • Scope (S)
    Unchanged
  • Confidentiality (C)
    None
  • Integrity (I)
    None
  • Availability (A)
    High
Expand this section

SUSE

4.7 medium