Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
memcg: fix possible use-after-free in memcg_write_event_control()
memcg_write_event_control() accesses the dentry->d_name of the specified control fd to route the write call. As a cgroup interface file can’t be renamed, it’s safe to access d_name as long as the specified file is a regular cgroup file. Also, as these cgroup interface files can’t be removed before the directory, it’s safe to access the parent too.
Prior to 347c4a874710 (“memcg: remove cgroup_event->cft”), there was a call to __file_cft() which verified that the specified file is a regular cgroupfs file before further accesses. The cftype pointer returned from __file_cft() was no longer necessary and the commit inadvertently dropped the file type check with it allowing any file to slip through. With the invarients broken, the d_name and parent accesses can now race against renames and removals of arbitrary files and cause use-after-free’s.
Fix the bug by resurrecting the file type check in __file_cft(). Now that cgroupfs is implemented through kernfs, checking the file operations needs to go through a layer of indirection. Instead, let’s check the superblock and dentry type.
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS
- Affected packages:
- kernel @ 4.18.0 (+6 more)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
memcg: fix possible use-after-free in memcg_write_event_control()
memcg_write_event_control() accesses the dentry->d_name of the specified control fd to route the write call. As a cgroup interface file can’t be renamed, it’s safe to access d_name as long as the specified file is a regular cgroup file. Also, as these cgroup interface files can’t be removed before the directory, it’s safe to access the parent too.
Prior to 347c4a874710 (“memcg: remove cgroup_event->cft”), there was a call to __file_cft() which verified that the specified file is a regular cgroupfs file before further accesses. The cftype pointer returned from __file_cft() was no longer necessary and the commit inadvertently dropped the file type check with it allowing any file to slip through. With the invarients broken, the d_name and parent accesses can now race against renames and removals of arbitrary files and cause use-after-free’s.
Fix the bug by resurrecting the file type check in __file_cft(). Now that cgroupfs is implemented through kernfs, checking the file operations needs to go through a layer of indirection. Instead, let’s check the superblock and dentry type.