SUSE: CVE-2024-39501: SUSE Linux Security Advisory

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

drivers: core: synchronize really_probe() and dev_uevent()

Synchronize the dev->driver usage in really_probe() and dev_uevent().
These can run in different threads, what can result in the following
race condition for dev->driver uninitialization:

Thread #1:
==========

really_probe() {
...
probe_failed:
...
device_unbind_cleanup(dev) {
...
dev->driver = NULL; // driver to NULL
...
}
...
}

Thread #2:
==========

dev_uevent() {
...
if (dev->driver)
// If dev->driver is NULLed from really_probe() from here on,
// after above check, the system crashes
add_uevent_var(env, "DRIVER=%s", dev->driver->name);
...
}

really_probe() holds the lock, already. So nothing needs to be done
there. dev_uevent() is called with lock held, often, too. But not
always. What implies that we can't add any locking in dev_uevent()
itself. So fix this race by adding the lock to the non-protected
path. This is the path where above race is observed:

dev_uevent+0x235/0x380
uevent_show+0x10c/0x1f0 dev_attr_show+0x3a/0xa0
sysfs_kf_seq_show+0x17c/0x250
kernfs_seq_show+0x7c/0x90
seq_read_iter+0x2d7/0x940
kernfs_fop_read_iter+0xc6/0x310
vfs_read+0x5bc/0x6b0
ksys_read+0xeb/0x1b0
__x64_sys_read+0x42/0x50
x64_sys_call+0x27ad/0x2d30
do_syscall_64+0xcd/0x1d0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

Similar cases are reported by syzkaller in

https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=ffa8143439596313a85a

But these are regarding the *initialization* of dev->driver

dev->driver = drv;

As this switches dev->driver to non-NULL these reports can be considered
to be false-positives (which should be "fixed" by this commit, as well,
though).

The same issue was reported and tried to be fixed back in 2015 in

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

already.