vulnerability
Debian: CVE-2025-37953: linux, linux-6.1 -- security update
| Severity | CVSS | Published | Added | Modified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | (AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C) | May 20, 2025 | May 28, 2025 | Mar 30, 2026 |
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
sch_htb: make htb_deactivate() idempotent
Alan reported a NULL pointer dereference in htb_next_rb_node()
after we made htb_qlen_notify() idempotent.
It turns out in the following case it introduced some regression:
htb_dequeue_tree():
|-> fq_codel_dequeue()
|-> qdisc_tree_reduce_backlog()
|-> htb_qlen_notify()
|-> htb_deactivate()
|-> htb_next_rb_node()
|-> htb_deactivate()
For htb_next_rb_node(), after calling the 1st htb_deactivate(), the
clprio[prio]->ptr could be already set to NULL, which means
htb_next_rb_node() is vulnerable here.
For htb_deactivate(), although we checked qlen before calling it, in
case of qlen==0 after qdisc_tree_reduce_backlog(), we may call it again
which triggers the warning inside.
To fix the issues here, we need to:
1) Make htb_deactivate() idempotent, that is, simply return if we
already call it before.
2) Make htb_next_rb_node() safe against ptr==NULL.
Many thanks to Alan for testing and for the reproducer.
Solutions
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