Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nfsd: RCU-protect cl_cb_session to fix use-after-free on session teardown
After a DESTROY_SESSION the per-session teardown path can free a session while rpciod still holds an inflight callback rpc_task that dereferences clp->cl_cb_session. nfsd4_probe_callback_sync() flushes cl_callback_wq, but once nfsd4_run_cb_work() has called rpc_call_async() the rpc_task lives on rpciod; flushing the workqueue does not wait for it. rpc_shutdown_client() does drain rpciod tasks, but uses a 1-second wait_event_timeout — tasks stuck in rpc_delay() (e.g. 2-second NFS4ERR_DELAY retries) can outlive the drain.
destroy path rpciod
unhash_session(ses) nfsd4_probe_callback_sync(clp) flush_workqueue(cl_callback_wq) /* returns; rpc_task still live / nfsd4_put_session_locked(ses) free_session(ses) -> kfree(ses) nfsd4_cb_sequence_done() reads cb_clp->cl_cb_session / freed slab */
A second window exists in nfsd4_process_cb_update(). When __nfsd4_find_backchannel() returns NULL because unhash_session() has already removed the destroyed session from cl_sessions, setup_callback_client() takes the v4.1 early return so clp->cl_cb_session = ses never fires and the field retains a pointer to the about-to-be-freed session.
Fix both by converting cl_cb_session to an RCU-protected pointer:
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Move the cl_cb_session = ses assignment in setup_callback_client() to after rpc_create() succeeds, so it is only published when a working backchannel exists. Clear cl_cb_session on the error return in nfsd4_process_cb_update(). Both stores use rcu_assign_pointer().
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Annotate cl_cb_session with __rcu. All rpciod-side readers use rcu_read_lock()/rcu_dereference() and check for NULL, bailing to the appropriate error or requeue path: encode_cb_sequence4args(), decode_cb_sequence4resok(), nfsd41_cb_get_slot(), nfsd41_cb_release_slot(), nfsd4_cb_prepare(), and nfsd4_cb_sequence_done().
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Switch __free_session() from kfree() to kfree_rcu() so the session slab is not reclaimed until after an RCU grace period, guaranteeing that rpciod readers inside rcu_read_lock() never dereference freed memory.
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Pass the session pointer to the nfsd_cb_seq_status and nfsd_cb_free_slot tracepoints instead of having them re-read cl_cb_session.
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nfsd4_cb_prepare() calls rpc_exit() when the session is NULL, routing through the done/release path to requeue the callback.
Details
- Affected product:
- Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS
- Affected packages:
- linux @ 4.19.0 (+4 more)