CVE-2023-52973

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

vc_screen: move load of struct vc_data pointer in vcs_read() to avoid UAF

After a call to console_unlock() in vcs_read() the vc_data struct can be freed by vc_deallocate(). Because of that, the struct vc_data pointer load must be done at the top of while loop in vcs_read() to avoid a UAF when vcs_size() is called.

Syzkaller reported a UAF in vcs_size().

BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in vcs_size (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:215) Read of size 4 at addr ffff8881137479a8 by task 4a005ed81e27e65/1537

CPU: 0 PID: 1537 Comm: 4a005ed81e27e65 Not tainted 6.2.0-rc5 #1 Hardware name: Red Hat KVM, BIOS 1.15.0-2.module Call Trace: __asan_report_load4_noabort (mm/kasan/report_generic.c:350) vcs_size (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:215) vcs_read (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:415) vfs_read (fs/read_write.c:468 fs/read_write.c:450) …

Allocated by task 1191: … kmalloc_trace (mm/slab_common.c:1069) vc_allocate (./include/linux/slab.h:580 ./include/linux/slab.h:720 drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1128 drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1108) con_install (drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:3383) tty_init_dev (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1301 drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1413 drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1390) tty_open (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2080 drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2126) chrdev_open (fs/char_dev.c:415) do_dentry_open (fs/open.c:883) vfs_open (fs/open.c:1014) …

Freed by task 1548: … kfree (mm/slab_common.c:1021) vc_port_destruct (drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1094) tty_port_destructor (drivers/tty/tty_port.c:296) tty_port_put (drivers/tty/tty_port.c:312) vt_disallocate_all (drivers/tty/vt/vt_ioctl.c:662 (discriminator 2)) vt_ioctl (drivers/tty/vt/vt_ioctl.c:903) tty_ioctl (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2776) …

The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff888113747800 which belongs to the cache kmalloc-1k of size 1024 The buggy address is located 424 bytes inside of 1024-byte region [ffff888113747800, ffff888113747c00)

The buggy address belongs to the physical page: page:00000000b3fe6c7c refcount:1 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000 index:0x0 pfn:0x113740 head:00000000b3fe6c7c order:3 compound_mapcount:0 subpages_mapcount:0 compound_pincount:0 anon flags: 0x17ffffc0010200(slab|head|node=0|zone=2|lastcpupid=0x1fffff) raw: 0017ffffc0010200 ffff888100042dc0 0000000000000000 dead000000000001 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000000100010 00000001ffffffff 0000000000000000 page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected

Memory state around the buggy address: ffff888113747880: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ffff888113747900: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb

ffff888113747980: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ^ ffff888113747a00: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ffff888113747a80: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ================================================================== Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/226fae124b2dac217ea5436060d623ff3385bc34
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/55515d7d8743b71b80bfe68e89eb9d92630626ab
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6332f52f44b9776568bf3c0b714ddfb0bb175e78
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8506f16aae9daf354e3732bcfd447e2a97f023df
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/af79ea9a2443016f64d8fd8d72020cc874f0e066
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d0332cbf53dad06a22189cc341391237f4ea6d9f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fc9e27f3ba083534b8bbf72ab0f5c810ffdc7d18