CVE-2020-25578

In FreeBSD 12.2-STABLE before r368969, 11.4-STABLE before r369047, 12.2-RELEASE before p3, 12.1-RELEASE before p13 and 11.4-RELEASE before p7 several file systems were not properly initializing the d_off field of the dirent structures returned by VOP_READDIR. In particular, tmpfs(5), smbfs(5), autofs(5) and mqueuefs(5) were failing to do so. As a result, eight uninitialized kernel stack bytes may be leaked to userspace by these file systems.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/29.html

References

• https://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-21:01.fsdisclosure.asc
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210423-0002/