CVE-2024-26676

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

af_unix: Call kfree_skb() for dead unix_(sk)->oob_skb in GC.

syzbot reported a warning [0] in __unix_gc() with a repro, which creates a socketpair and sends one sockets fd to itself using the peer.

socketpair(AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0, [3, 4]) = 0 sendmsg(4, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base=360, iov_len=1}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_control=[{cmsg_len=20, cmsg_level=SOL_SOCKET, cmsg_type=SCM_RIGHTS, cmsg_data=[3]}], msg_controllen=24, msg_flags=0}, MSG_OOB|MSG_PROBE|MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_ZEROCOPY) = 1

This forms a self-cyclic reference that GC should finally untangle but does not due to lack of MSG_OOB handling, resulting in memory leak.

Recently, commit 11498715f266 (af_unix: Remove io_uring code for GC.) removed io_urings dead code in GC and revealed the problem.

The code was executed at the final stage of GC and unconditionally moved all GC candidates from gc_candidates to gc_inflight_list. That papered over the reported problem by always making the following WARN_ON_ONCE(!list_empty(&gc_candidates)) false.

The problem has been there since commit 2aab4b969002 (af_unix: fix struct pid leaks in OOB support) added full scm support for MSG_OOB while fixing another bug.

To fix this problem, we must call kfree_skb() for unix_sk(sk)->oob_skb if the socket still exists in gc_candidates after purging collected skb.

Then, we need to set NULL to oob_skb before calling kfree_skb() because it calls last fput() and triggers unix_release_sock(), where we call duplicate kfree_skb(u->oob_skb) if not NULL.

Note that the leaked socket remained being linked to a global list, so kmemleak also could not detect it. We need to check /proc/net/protocol to notice the unfreed socket.

[0]: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 2863 at net/unix/garbage.c:345 __unix_gc+0xc74/0xe80 net/unix/garbage.c:345 Modules linked in: CPU: 0 PID: 2863 Comm: kworker/u4:11 Not tainted 6.8.0-rc1-syzkaller-00583-g1701940b1a02 #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 01/25/2024 Workqueue: events_unbound __unix_gc RIP: 0010:__unix_gc+0xc74/0xe80 net/unix/garbage.c:345 Code: 8b 5c 24 50 e9 86 f8 ff ff e8 f8 e4 22 f8 31 d2 48 c7 c6 30 6a 69 89 4c 89 ef e8 97 ef ff ff e9 80 f9 ff ff e8 dd e4 22 f8 90 <0f> 0b 90 e9 7b fd ff ff 48 89 df e8 5c e7 7c f8 e9 d3 f8 ff ff e8 RSP: 0018:ffffc9000b03fba0 EFLAGS: 00010293 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffffc9000b03fc10 RCX: ffffffff816c493e RDX: ffff88802c02d940 RSI: ffffffff896982f3 RDI: ffffc9000b03fb30 RBP: ffffc9000b03fce0 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: fffff52001607f66 R10: 0000000000000003 R11: 0000000000000002 R12: dffffc0000000000 R13: ffffc9000b03fc10 R14: ffffc9000b03fc10 R15: 0000000000000001 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8880b9400000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00005559c8677a60 CR3: 000000000d57a000 CR4: 00000000003506f0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: process_one_work+0x889/0x15e0 kernel/workqueue.c:2633 process_scheduled_works kernel/workqueue.c:2706 [inline] worker_thread+0x8b9/0x12a0 kernel/workqueue.c:2787 kthread+0x2c6/0x3b0 kernel/kthread.c:388 ret_from_fork+0x45/0x80 arch/x86/kernel/process.c:147 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1b/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:242

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory.

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/1279f9d9dec2d7462823a18c29ad61359e0a007d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4fe505c63aa3273135a57597fda761e9aecc7668
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82ae47c5c3a6b27fdc0f9e83c1499cb439c56140
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b74aa9ce13d02b7fd37c5325b99854f91b9b4276
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0e09186d8821ad59806115d347ea32efa43ca4b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1279f9d9dec2d7462823a18c29ad61359e0a007d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4fe505c63aa3273135a57597fda761e9aecc7668
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82ae47c5c3a6b27fdc0f9e83c1499cb439c56140
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b74aa9ce13d02b7fd37c5325b99854f91b9b4276
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0e09186d8821ad59806115d347ea32efa43ca4b