About vulnerability

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

hugetlbfs: fix null-ptr-deref in hugetlbfs_parse_param()

Syzkaller reports a null-ptr-deref bug as follows:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] RIP: 0010:hugetlbfs_parse_param+0x1dd/0x8e0 fs/hugetlbfs/inode.c:1380 […] Call Trace: vfs_parse_fs_param fs/fs_context.c:148 [inline] vfs_parse_fs_param+0x1f9/0x3c0 fs/fs_context.c:129 vfs_parse_fs_string+0xdb/0x170 fs/fs_context.c:191 generic_parse_monolithic+0x16f/0x1f0 fs/fs_context.c:231 do_new_mount fs/namespace.c:3036 [inline] path_mount+0x12de/0x1e20 fs/namespace.c:3370 do_mount fs/namespace.c:3383 [inline] __do_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:3591 [inline] __se_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:3568 [inline] __x64_sys_mount+0x27f/0x300 fs/namespace.c:3568 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd […]

According to commit “vfs: parse: deal with zero length string value”, kernel will set the param->string to null pointer in vfs_parse_fs_string() if fs string has zero length.

Yet the problem is that, hugetlbfs_parse_param() will dereference the param->string, without checking whether it is a null pointer. To be more specific, if hugetlbfs_parse_param() parses an illegal mount parameter, such as “size=,”, kernel will constructs struct fs_parameter with null pointer in vfs_parse_fs_string(), then passes this struct fs_parameter to hugetlbfs_parse_param(), which triggers the above null-ptr-deref bug.

This patch solves it by adding sanity check on param->string in hugetlbfs_parse_param().

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

kernel @ 4.18.0 (+15 more)

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

hugetlbfs: fix null-ptr-deref in hugetlbfs_parse_param()

Syzkaller reports a null-ptr-deref bug as follows:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] RIP: 0010:hugetlbfs_parse_param+0x1dd/0x8e0 fs/hugetlbfs/inode.c:1380 […] Call Trace: vfs_parse_fs_param fs/fs_context.c:148 [inline] vfs_parse_fs_param+0x1f9/0x3c0 fs/fs_context.c:129 vfs_parse_fs_string+0xdb/0x170 fs/fs_context.c:191 generic_parse_monolithic+0x16f/0x1f0 fs/fs_context.c:231 do_new_mount fs/namespace.c:3036 [inline] path_mount+0x12de/0x1e20 fs/namespace.c:3370 do_mount fs/namespace.c:3383 [inline] __do_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:3591 [inline] __se_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:3568 [inline] __x64_sys_mount+0x27f/0x300 fs/namespace.c:3568 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x35/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd […]

According to commit “vfs: parse: deal with zero length string value”, kernel will set the param->string to null pointer in vfs_parse_fs_string() if fs string has zero length.

Yet the problem is that, hugetlbfs_parse_param() will dereference the param->string, without checking whether it is a null pointer. To be more specific, if hugetlbfs_parse_param() parses an illegal mount parameter, such as “size=,”, kernel will constructs struct fs_parameter with null pointer in vfs_parse_fs_string(), then passes this struct fs_parameter to hugetlbfs_parse_param(), which triggers the above null-ptr-deref bug.

This patch solves it by adding sanity check on param->string in hugetlbfs_parse_param().