CVE-2021-47508

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

btrfs: free exchange changeset on failures

Fstests runs on my VMs have show several kmemleak reports like the following.

unreferenced object 0xffff88811ae59080 (size 64): comm xfs_io, pid 12124, jiffies 4294987392 (age 6.368s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 c0 1c 00 00 00 00 00 ff cf 1c 00 00 00 00 00 ……………. 90 97 e5 1a 81 88 ff ff 90 97 e5 1a 81 88 ff ff ……………. backtrace: [<00000000ac0176d2>] ulist_add_merge+0x60/0x150 [btrfs] [<0000000076e9f312>] set_state_bits+0x86/0xc0 [btrfs] [<0000000014fe73d6>] set_extent_bit+0x270/0x690 [btrfs] [<000000004f675208>] set_record_extent_bits+0x19/0x20 [btrfs] [<00000000b96137b1>] qgroup_reserve_data+0x274/0x310 [btrfs] [<0000000057e9dcbb>] btrfs_check_data_free_space+0x5c/0xa0 [btrfs] [<0000000019c4511d>] btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space+0x1b/0xa0 [btrfs] [<000000006d37e007>] btrfs_dio_iomap_begin+0x415/0x970 [btrfs] [<00000000fb8a74b8>] iomap_iter+0x161/0x1e0 [<0000000071dff6ff>] __iomap_dio_rw+0x1df/0x700 [<000000002567ba53>] iomap_dio_rw+0x5/0x20 [<0000000072e555f8>] btrfs_file_write_iter+0x290/0x530 [btrfs] [<000000005eb3d845>] new_sync_write+0x106/0x180 [<000000003fb505bf>] vfs_write+0x24d/0x2f0 [<000000009bb57d37>] __x64_sys_pwrite64+0x69/0xa0 [<000000003eba3fdf>] do_syscall_64+0x43/0x90

In case brtfs_qgroup_reserve_data() or btrfs_delalloc_reserve_metadata() fail the allocated extent_changeset will not be freed.

So in btrfs_check_data_free_space() and btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space() free the allocated extent_changeset to get rid of the allocated memory.

The issue currently only happens in the direct IO write path, but only after 65b3c08606e5 (btrfs: fix ENOSPC failure when attempting direct IO write into NOCOW range), and also at defrag_one_locked_target(). Every other place is always calling extent_changeset_free() even if its call to btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space() or btrfs_check_data_free_space() has failed.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ca06c5cb1b6dbfe67655b33c02fc394d65824519
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/da5e817d9d75422eaaa05490d0b9a5e328fc1a51
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ca06c5cb1b6dbfe67655b33c02fc394d65824519
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/da5e817d9d75422eaaa05490d0b9a5e328fc1a51