Improper Input Validation Affecting kernel-rt-debug-modules package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (13th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-RHEL8-KERNELRTDEBUGMODULES-8669932
  • published29 Jan 2025
  • disclosed21 Jan 2025

Introduced: 21 Jan 2025

CVE-2025-21664  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-20  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for RHEL:8 kernel-rt-debug-modules.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-rt-debug-modules package and not the kernel-rt-debug-modules 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:

dm thin: make get_first_thin use rcu-safe list first function

The documentation in rculist.h explains the absence of list_empty_rcu() and cautions programmers against relying on a list_empty() -> list_first() sequence in RCU safe code. This is because each of these functions performs its own READ_ONCE() of the list head. This can lead to a situation where the list_empty() sees a valid list entry, but the subsequent list_first() sees a different view of list head state after a modification.

In the case of dm-thin, this author had a production box crash from a GP fault in the process_deferred_bios path. This function saw a valid list head in get_first_thin() but when it subsequently dereferenced that and turned it into a thin_c, it got the inside of the struct pool, since the list was now empty and referring to itself. The kernel on which this occurred printed both a warning about a refcount_t being saturated, and a UBSAN error for an out-of-bounds cpuid access in the queued spinlock, prior to the fault itself. When the resulting kdump was examined, it was possible to see another thread patiently waiting in thin_dtr's synchronize_rcu.

The thin_dtr call managed to pull the thin_c out of the active thins list (and have it be the last entry in the active_thins list) at just the wrong moment which lead to this crash.

Fortunately, the fix here is straight forward. Switch get_first_thin() function to use list_first_or_null_rcu() which performs just a single READ_ONCE() and returns NULL if the list is already empty.

This was run against the devicemapper test suite's thin-provisioning suites for delete and suspend and no regressions were observed.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1