vulnerability

Debian: CVE-2021-46988: linux -- security update

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Published
02/28/2024
Added
07/30/2024
Modified
01/30/2025

Description

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

userfaultfd: release page in error path to avoid BUG_ON

Consider the following sequence of events:

1. Userspace issues a UFFD ioctl, which ends up calling into
shmem_mfill_atomic_pte(). We successfully account the blocks, we
shmem_alloc_page(), but then the copy_from_user() fails. We return
-ENOENT. We don't release the page we allocated.
2. Our caller detects this error code, tries the copy_from_user() after
dropping the mmap_lock, and retries, calling back into
shmem_mfill_atomic_pte().
3. Meanwhile, let's say another process filled up the tmpfs being used.
4. So shmem_mfill_atomic_pte() fails to account blocks this time, and
immediately returns - without releasing the page.

This triggers a BUG_ON in our caller, which asserts that the page
should always be consumed, unless -ENOENT is returned.

To fix this, detect if we have such a "dangling" page when accounting
fails, and if so, release it before returning.

Solution

debian-upgrade-linux
Title
NEW

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