vulnerability

Red Hat: CVE-2024-56655: kernel: netfilter: nf_tables: do not defer rule destruction via call_rcu

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Published
Dec 27, 2024
Added
Jul 9, 2025
Modified
Jul 10, 2025

Description

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

netfilter: nf_tables: do not defer rule destruction via call_rcu

nf_tables_chain_destroy can sleep, it can't be used from call_rcu
callbacks.

Moreover, nf_tables_rule_release() is only safe for error unwinding,
while transaction mutex is held and the to-be-desroyed rule was not
exposed to either dataplane or dumps, as it deactives+frees without
the required synchronize_rcu() in-between.

nft_rule_expr_deactivate() callbacks will change ->use counters
of other chains/sets, see e.g. nft_lookup .deactivate callback, these
must be serialized via transaction mutex.

Also add a few lockdep asserts to make this more explicit.

Calling synchronize_rcu() isn't ideal, but fixing this without is hard
and way more intrusive. As-is, we can get:

WARNING: .. net/netfilter/nf_tables_api.c:5515 nft_set_destroy+0x..
Workqueue: events nf_tables_trans_destroy_work
RIP: 0010:nft_set_destroy+0x3fe/0x5c0
Call Trace:
<TASK>
nf_tables_trans_destroy_work+0x6b7/0xad0
process_one_work+0x64a/0xce0
worker_thread+0x613/0x10d0

In case the synchronize_rcu becomes an issue, we can explore alternatives.

One way would be to allocate nft_trans_rule objects + one nft_trans_chain
object, deactivate the rules + the chain and then defer the freeing to the
nft destroy workqueue. We'd still need to keep the synchronize_rcu path as
a fallback to handle -ENOMEM corner cases though.

Solution

no-fix-redhat-rpm-package
Title
NEW

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