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

x86/mm/pat: fix VM_PAT handling in COW mappings

PAT handling wont do the right thing in COW mappings: the first PTE (or, in fact, all PTEs) can be replaced during write faults to point at anon folios. Reliably recovering the correct PFN and cachemode using follow_phys() from PTEs will not work in COW mappings.

Using follow_phys(), we might just get the address+protection of the anon folio (which is very wrong), or fail on swap/nonswap entries, failing follow_phys() and triggering a WARN_ON_ONCE() in untrack_pfn() and track_pfn_copy(), not properly calling free_pfn_range().

In free_pfn_range(), we either wouldnt call memtype_free() or would call it with the wrong range, possibly leaking memory.

To fix that, lets update follow_phys() to refuse returning anon folios, and fallback to using the stored PFN inside vma->vm_pgoff for COW mappings if we run into that.

We will now properly handle untrack_pfn() with COW mappings, where we dont need the cachemode. Well have to fail fork()->track_pfn_copy() if the first page was replaced by an anon folio, though: wed have to store the cachemode in the VMA to make this work, likely growing the VMA size.

For now, lets keep it simple and let track_pfn_copy() just fail in that case: it would have failed in the past with swap/nonswap entries already, and it would have done the wrong thing with anon folios.

Simple reproducer to trigger the WARN_ON_ONCE() in untrack_pfn():

<— C reproducer —> #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <liburing.h>

int main(void) { struct io_uring_params p = {}; int ring_fd; size_t size; char *map;

     ring_fd = io_uring_setup(1, &p);
     if (ring_fd < 0) {
             perror(io_uring_setup);
             return 1;
     }
     size = p.sq_off.array + p.sq_entries * sizeof(unsigned);

     /* Map the submission queue ring MAP_PRIVATE */
     map = mmap(0, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE,
                ring_fd, IORING_OFF_SQ_RING);
     if (map == MAP_FAILED) {
             perror(mmap);
             return 1;
     }

     /* We have at least one page. Lets COW it. */
     *map = 0;
     pause();
     return 0;

} <— C reproducer —>

On a system with 16 GiB RAM and swap configured:

./iouring &

memhog 16G

killall iouring

[ 301.552930] ————[ cut here ]———— [ 301.553285] WARNING: CPU: 7 PID: 1402 at arch/x86/mm/pat/memtype.c:1060 untrack_pfn+0xf4/0x100 [ 301.553989] Modules linked in: binfmt_misc nft_fib_inet nft_fib_ipv4 nft_fib_ipv6 nft_fib nft_reject_g [ 301.558232] CPU: 7 PID: 1402 Comm: iouring Not tainted 6.7.5-100.fc38.x86_64 #1 [ 301.558772] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebu4 [ 301.559569] RIP: 0010:untrack_pfn+0xf4/0x100 [ 301.559893] Code: 75 c4 eb cf 48 8b 43 10 8b a8 e8 00 00 00 3b 6b 28 74 b8 48 8b 7b 30 e8 ea 1a f7 000 [ 301.561189] RSP: 0018:ffffba2c0377fab8 EFLAGS: 00010282 [ 301.561590] RAX: 00000000ffffffea RBX: ffff9208c8ce9cc0 RCX: 000000010455e047 [ 301.562105] RDX: 07fffffff0eb1e0a RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff9208c391d200 [ 301.562628] RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ffffba2c0377fab8 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 301.563145] R10: ffff9208d2292d50 R11: 0000000000000002 R12: 00007fea890e0000 [ 301.563669] R13: 0000000000000000 R14: ffffba2c0377fc08 R15: 0000000000000000 [ 301.564186] FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff920c2fbc0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 301.564773] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 301.565197] CR2: 00007fea88ee8a20 CR3: 00000001033a8000 CR4: 0000000000750ef0 [ 301.565725] PKRU: 55555554 [ 301.565944] Call Trace: [ 301.566148] [ 301.566325] ? untrack_pfn+0xf4/0x100 [ 301.566618] ? __warn+0x81/0x130 [ 301.566876] ? untrack_pfn+0xf4/0x100 [ 3 —truncated—

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/04c35ab3bdae7fefbd7c7a7355f29fa03a035221
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/09e6bb53217bf388a0d2fd7fb21e74ab9dffc173
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1341e4b32e1fb1b0acd002ccd56f07bd32f2abc6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/51b7841f3fe84606ec0bd8da859d22e05e5419ec
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7cfee26d1950250b14c5cb0a37b142f3fcc6396a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/97e93367e82752e475a33839a80b33bdbef1209f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c2b2430b48f3c9eaccd2c3d2ad75bb540d4952f4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f18681daaec9665a15c5e7e0f591aad5d0ac622b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/04c35ab3bdae7fefbd7c7a7355f29fa03a035221
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/09e6bb53217bf388a0d2fd7fb21e74ab9dffc173
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1341e4b32e1fb1b0acd002ccd56f07bd32f2abc6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/51b7841f3fe84606ec0bd8da859d22e05e5419ec
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7cfee26d1950250b14c5cb0a37b142f3fcc6396a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/97e93367e82752e475a33839a80b33bdbef1209f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c2b2430b48f3c9eaccd2c3d2ad75bb540d4952f4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f18681daaec9665a15c5e7e0f591aad5d0ac622b
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/06/msg00017.html
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/06/msg00020.html