NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting kernel package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux security rating

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS
    0.04% (15th percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-RHEL7-KERNEL-6578360
  • published 6 Apr 2024
  • disclosed 5 Apr 2024

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for RHEL:7 kernel.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel package and not the kernel package as distributed by RHEL. See How to fix? for RHEL:7 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

vfio/pci: Create persistent INTx handler

A vulnerability exists where the eventfd for INTx signaling can be deconfigured, which unregisters the IRQ handler but still allows eventfds to be signaled with a NULL context through the SET_IRQS ioctl or through unmask irqfd if the device interrupt is pending.

Ideally this could be solved with some additional locking; the igate mutex serializes the ioctl and config space accesses, and the interrupt handler is unregistered relative to the trigger, but the irqfd path runs asynchronous to those. The igate mutex cannot be acquired from the atomic context of the eventfd wake function. Disabling the irqfd relative to the eventfd registration is potentially incompatible with existing userspace.

As a result, the solution implemented here moves configuration of the INTx interrupt handler to track the lifetime of the INTx context object and irq_type configuration, rather than registration of a particular trigger eventfd. Synchronization is added between the ioctl path and eventfd_signal() wrapper such that the eventfd trigger can be dynamically updated relative to in-flight interrupts or irqfd callbacks.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
Expand this section

Red Hat

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

SUSE

4.4 medium