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

mlxsw: spectrum_ipip: Fix memory leak when changing remote IPv6 address

The device stores IPv6 addresses that are used for encapsulation in linear memory that is managed by the driver.

Changing the remote address of an ip6gre net device never worked properly, but since cited commit the following reproducer [1] would result in a warning [2] and a memory leak [3]. The problem is that the new remote address is never added by the driver to its hash table (and therefore the device) and the old address is never removed from it.

Fix by programming the new address when the configuration of the ip6gre net device changes and removing the old one. If the address did not change, then the above would result in increasing the reference count of the address and then decreasing it.

[1]

ip link add name bla up type ip6gre local 2001:db8:1::1 remote 2001:db8:2::1 tos inherit ttl inherit

ip link set dev bla type ip6gre remote 2001:db8:3::1

ip link del dev bla

devlink dev reload pci/0000:01:00.0

[2] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 1682 at drivers/net/ethernet/mellanox/mlxsw/spectrum.c:3002 mlxsw_sp_ipv6_addr_put+0x140/0x1d0 Modules linked in: CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1682 Comm: ip Not tainted 6.12.0-rc3-custom-g86b5b55bc835 #151 Hardware name: Nvidia SN5600/VMOD0013, BIOS 5.13 05/31/2023 RIP: 0010:mlxsw_sp_ipv6_addr_put+0x140/0x1d0 […] Call Trace: mlxsw_sp_router_netdevice_event+0x55f/0x1240 notifier_call_chain+0x5a/0xd0 call_netdevice_notifiers_info+0x39/0x90 unregister_netdevice_many_notify+0x63e/0x9d0 rtnl_dellink+0x16b/0x3a0 rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x142/0x3f0 netlink_rcv_skb+0x50/0x100 netlink_unicast+0x242/0x390 netlink_sendmsg+0x1de/0x420 ____sys_sendmsg+0x2bd/0x320 ___sys_sendmsg+0x9a/0xe0 __sys_sendmsg+0x7a/0xd0 do_syscall_64+0x9e/0x1a0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

[3] unreferenced object 0xffff898081f597a0 (size 32): comm ip, pid 1626, jiffies 4294719324 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 20 01 0d b8 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 …………… 21 49 61 83 80 89 ff ff 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 !Ia…………. backtrace (crc fd9be911): [<00000000df89c55d>] __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x1da/0x260 [<00000000ff2a1ddb>] mlxsw_sp_ipv6_addr_kvdl_index_get+0x281/0x340 [<000000009ddd445d>] mlxsw_sp_router_netdevice_event+0x47b/0x1240 [<00000000743e7757>] notifier_call_chain+0x5a/0xd0 [<000000007c7b9e13>] call_netdevice_notifiers_info+0x39/0x90 [<000000002509645d>] register_netdevice+0x5f7/0x7a0 [<00000000c2e7d2a9>] ip6gre_newlink_common.isra.0+0x65/0x130 [<0000000087cd6d8d>] ip6gre_newlink+0x72/0x120 [<000000004df7c7cc>] rtnl_newlink+0x471/0xa20 [<0000000057ed632a>] rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x142/0x3f0 [<0000000032e0d5b5>] netlink_rcv_skb+0x50/0x100 [<00000000908bca63>] netlink_unicast+0x242/0x390 [<00000000cdbe1c87>] netlink_sendmsg+0x1de/0x420 [<0000000011db153e>] ____sys_sendmsg+0x2bd/0x320 [<000000003b6d53eb>] ___sys_sendmsg+0x9a/0xe0 [<00000000cae27c62>] __sys_sendmsg+0x7a/0xd0

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/12ae97c531fcd3bfd774d4dfeaeac23eafe24280
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/31384aa2ad05c29c7745000f321154f42de24d1a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1bbdbe07f0bc3bc9f87efe4672d67208c6d6942
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d8f298eb6659eb6a38e26b79e77de4449dc6e61b