vulnerability
Debian: CVE-2021-46988: linux -- security update
Severity | CVSS | Published | Added | Modified |
---|---|---|---|---|
5 | (AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C) | 02/28/2024 | 07/30/2024 | 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

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