NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting kernel-default-base package, versions <5.14.21-150400.24.133.2.150400.24.64.5


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (5th percentile)

Do your applications use this vulnerable package?

In a few clicks we can analyze your entire application and see what components are vulnerable in your application, and suggest you quick fixes.

Test your applications

Snyk Learn

Learn about NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerabilities in an interactive lesson.

Start learning
  • Snyk IDSNYK-SLES154-KERNELDEFAULTBASE-8090508
  • published25 Sept 2024
  • disclosed24 Sept 2024

Introduced: 24 Sep 2024

CVE-2023-52894  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade SLES:15.4 kernel-default-base to version 5.14.21-150400.24.133.2.150400.24.64.5 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-default-base package and not the kernel-default-base package as distributed by SLES. See How to fix? for SLES:15.4 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

usb: gadget: f_ncm: fix potential NULL ptr deref in ncm_bitrate()

In Google internal bug 265639009 we've received an (as yet) unreproducible crash report from an aarch64 GKI 5.10.149-android13 running device.

AFAICT the source code is at: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/refs/tags/ASB-2022-12-05_13-5.10

The call stack is: ncm_close() -> ncm_notify() -> ncm_do_notify() with the crash at: ncm_do_notify+0x98/0x270 Code: 79000d0b b9000a6c f940012a f9400269 (b9405d4b)

Which I believe disassembles to (I don't know ARM assembly, but it looks sane enough to me...):

// halfword (16-bit) store presumably to event->wLength (at offset 6 of struct usb_cdc_notification) 0B 0D 00 79 strh w11, [x8, #6]

// word (32-bit) store presumably to req->Length (at offset 8 of struct usb_request) 6C 0A 00 B9 str w12, [x19, #8]

// x10 (NULL) was read here from offset 0 of valid pointer x9 // IMHO we're reading 'cdev->gadget' and getting NULL // gadget is indeed at offset 0 of struct usb_composite_dev 2A 01 40 F9 ldr x10, [x9]

// loading req->buf pointer, which is at offset 0 of struct usb_request 69 02 40 F9 ldr x9, [x19]

// x10 is null, crash, appears to be attempt to read cdev->gadget->max_speed 4B 5D 40 B9 ldr w11, [x10, #0x5c]

which seems to line up with ncm_do_notify() case NCM_NOTIFY_SPEED code fragment:

event->wLength = cpu_to_le16(8); req->length = NCM_STATUS_BYTECOUNT;

/* SPEED_CHANGE data is up/down speeds in bits/sec */ data = req->buf + sizeof *event; data[0] = cpu_to_le32(ncm_bitrate(cdev->gadget));

My analysis of registers and NULL ptr deref crash offset (Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 000000000000005c) heavily suggests that the crash is due to 'cdev->gadget' being NULL when executing: data[0] = cpu_to_le32(ncm_bitrate(cdev->gadget)); which calls: ncm_bitrate(NULL) which then calls: gadget_is_superspeed(NULL) which reads ((struct usb_gadget *)NULL)->max_speed and hits a panic.

AFAICT, if I'm counting right, the offset of max_speed is indeed 0x5C. (remember there's a GKI KABI reservation of 16 bytes in struct work_struct)

It's not at all clear to me how this is all supposed to work... but returning 0 seems much better than panic-ing...

CVSS Scores

version 3.1