Race Condition Affecting kernel package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux security rating

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS
    0.04% (6th percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-RHEL7-KERNEL-7433654
  • published 10 Jul 2024
  • disclosed 6 Jul 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:

drm/drm_file: Fix pid refcounting race

<maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com>, Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>, Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>

filp->pid is supposed to be a refcounted pointer; however, before this patch, drm_file_update_pid() only increments the refcount of a struct pid after storing a pointer to it in filp->pid and dropping the dev->filelist_mutex, making the following race possible:

process A process B ========= ========= begin drm_file_update_pid mutex_lock(&dev->filelist_mutex) rcu_replace_pointer(filp->pid, <pid B>, 1) mutex_unlock(&dev->filelist_mutex) begin drm_file_update_pid mutex_lock(&dev->filelist_mutex) rcu_replace_pointer(filp->pid, <pid A>, 1) mutex_unlock(&dev->filelist_mutex) get_pid(<pid A>) synchronize_rcu() put_pid(<pid B>) *** pid B reaches refcount 0 and is freed here *** get_pid(<pid B>) *** UAF *** synchronize_rcu() put_pid(<pid A>)

As far as I know, this race can only occur with CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU=y because it requires RCU to detect a quiescent state in code that is not explicitly calling into the scheduler.

This race leads to use-after-free of a "struct pid". It is probably somewhat hard to hit because process A has to pass through a synchronize_rcu() operation while process B is between mutex_unlock() and get_pid().

Fix it by ensuring that by the time a pointer to the current task's pid is stored in the file, an extra reference to the pid has been taken.

This fix also removes the condition for synchronize_rcu(); I think that optimization is unnecessary complexity, since in that case we would usually have bailed out on the lockless check above.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
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NVD

7 high
  • Attack Vector (AV)
    Local
  • Attack Complexity (AC)
    High
  • Privileges Required (PR)
    Low
  • User Interaction (UI)
    None
  • Scope (S)
    Unchanged
  • Confidentiality (C)
    High
  • Integrity (I)
    High
  • Availability (A)
    High
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Red Hat

5.5 medium
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SUSE

5.5 medium