Resource Leak Affecting kernel-cross-headers package, versions *

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

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

locking/qrwlock: Fix ordering in queued_write_lock_slowpath()

While this code is executed with the wait_lock held, a reader can acquire the lock without holding wait_lock. The writer side loops checking the value with the atomic_cond_read_acquire(), but only truly acquires the lock when the compare-and-exchange is completed successfully which isn’t ordered. This exposes the window between the acquire and the cmpxchg to an A-B-A problem which allows reads following the lock acquisition to observe values speculatively before the write lock is truly acquired.

We've seen a problem in epoll where the reader does a xchg while holding the read lock, but the writer can see a value change out from under it.

Writer | Reader

ep_scan_ready_list() | |- write_lock_irq() | |- queued_write_lock_slowpath() | |- atomic_cond_read_acquire() | | read_lock_irqsave(&ep->lock, flags); --> (observes value before unlock) | chain_epi_lockless() | | epi->next = xchg(&ep->ovflist, epi); | | read_unlock_irqrestore(&ep->lock, flags); | | | atomic_cmpxchg_relaxed() | |-- READ_ONCE(ep->ovflist); |

A core can order the read of the ovflist ahead of the atomic_cmpxchg_relaxed(). Switching the cmpxchg to use acquire semantics addresses this issue at which point the atomic_cond_read can be switched to use relaxed semantics.

[peterz: use try_cmpxchg()]

• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-46921
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5902f9453a313be8fe78cbd7e7ca9dba9319fc6e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82808cc026811fbc3ecf0c0b267a12a339eead56
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82fa9ced35d88581cffa4a1c856fc41fca96d80a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/84a24bf8c52e66b7ac89ada5e3cfbe72d65c1896
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d558fcdb17139728347bccc60a16af3e639649d2