Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ima: verify the previous kernel’s IMA buffer lies in addressable RAM
Patch series “Address page fault in ima_restore_measurement_list()”, v3.
When the second-stage kernel is booted via kexec with a limiting command line such as “mem=<size>” we observe a pafe fault that happens.
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff97793ff47000 RIP: ima_restore_measurement_list+0xdc/0x45a #PF: error_code(0x0000) not-present page
This happens on x86_64 only, as this is already fixed in aarch64 in commit: cbf9c4b9617b (“of: check previous kernel’s ima-kexec-buffer against memory bounds”)
This patch (of 3):
When the second-stage kernel is booted with a limiting command line (e.g. “mem=<size>”), the IMA measurement buffer handed over from the previous kernel may fall outside the addressable RAM of the new kernel. Accessing such a buffer can fault during early restore.
Introduce a small generic helper, ima_validate_range(), which verifies that a physical [start, end] range for the previous-kernel IMA buffer lies within addressable memory:
- On x86, use pfn_range_is_mapped().
- On OF based architectures, use page_is_ram().
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , TuxCare 9.6 ESU
- Affected packages:
- kernel @ 5.14.0 (+1 more)
KernelCare state
Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.
| Operating system | Status | Covered kernels |
|---|---|---|
| Debian 13 | Planned | — |
| Ubuntu 24.04 | Planned | — |