CVE-2024-42078

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

nfsd: initialise nfsd_info.mutex early.

nfsd_info.mutex can be dereferenced by svc_pool_stats_start() immediately after the new netns is created. Currently this can trigger an oops.

Move the initialisation earlier before it can possibly be dereferenced.

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://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e8b94045bc77ce4f085ddfb9eb04e5760e66169
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0011bca603c101f2a3c007bdb77f7006fa78fb1