CVE-2024-53111

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

mm/mremap: fix address wraparound in move_page_tables()

On 32-bit platforms, it is possible for the expression len + old_addr < old_end to be false-positive if len + old_addr wraps around. old_addr is the cursor in the old range up to which page table entries have been moved; so if the operation succeeded, old_addr is the end of the old region, and adding len to it can wrap.

The overflow causes mremap() to mistakenly believe that PTEs have been copied; the consequence is that mremap() bails out, but doesnt move the PTEs back before the new VMA is unmapped, causing anonymous pages in the region to be lost. So basically if userspace tries to mremap() a private-anon region and hits this bug, mremap() will return an error and the private-anon regions contents appear to have been zeroed.

The idea of this check is that old_end - len is the original start address, and writing the check that way also makes it easier to read; so fix the check by rearranging the comparison accordingly.

(An alternate fix would be to refactor this function by introducing an orig_old_start variable or such.)

Tested in a VM with a 32-bit X86 kernel; without the patch:

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user@horn:~/big_mremap$ cat test.c
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <err.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>

#define ADDR1 ((void*)0x60000000)
#define ADDR2 ((void*)0x10000000)
#define SIZE          0x50000000uL

int main(void) {
  unsigned char *p1 = mmap(ADDR1, SIZE, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE,
      MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE, -1, 0);
  if (p1 == MAP_FAILED)
    err(1, mmap 1);
  unsigned char *p2 = mmap(ADDR2, SIZE, PROT_NONE,
      MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED_NOREPLACE, -1, 0);
  if (p2 == MAP_FAILED)
    err(1, mmap 2);
  *p1 = 0x41;
  printf(first char is 0x%02hhxn, *p1);
  unsigned char *p3 = mremap(p1, SIZE, SIZE,
      MREMAP_MAYMOVE|MREMAP_FIXED, p2);
  if (p3 == MAP_FAILED) {
    printf(mremap() failed; first char is 0x%02hhxn, *p1);
  } else {
    printf(mremap() succeeded; first char is 0x%02hhxn, *p3);
  }
}
user@horn:~/big_mremap$ gcc -static -o test test.c
user@horn:~/big_mremap$ setarch -R ./test
first char is 0x41
mremap() failed; first char is 0x00

With the patch:

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user@horn:~/big_mremap$ setarch -R ./test
first char is 0x41
mremap() succeeded; first char is 0x41

Weakness

The product performs a calculation that can produce an integer overflow or wraparound, when the logic assumes that the resulting value will always be larger than the original value. This can introduce other weaknesses when the calculation is used for resource management or execution control.

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.
• If possible, choose a language or compiler that performs automatic bounds checking.
• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• Use libraries or frameworks that make it easier to handle numbers without unexpected consequences.
• Examples include safe integer handling packages such as SafeInt (C++) or IntegerLib (C or C++). [REF-106]
• Perform input validation on any numeric input by ensuring that it is within the expected range. Enforce that the input meets both the minimum and maximum requirements for the expected range.
• Use unsigned integers where possible. This makes it easier to perform validation for integer overflows. When signed integers are required, ensure that the range check includes minimum values as well as maximum values.
• Understand the programming language’s underlying representation and how it interacts with numeric calculation (CWE-681). Pay close attention to byte size discrepancies, precision, signed/unsigned distinctions, truncation, conversion and casting between types, “not-a-number” calculations, and how the language handles numbers that are too large or too small for its underlying representation. [REF-7]
• Also be careful to account for 32-bit, 64-bit, and other potential differences that may affect the numeric representation.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/92.html

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/909543dc279a91122fb08e4653a72b82f0ad28f4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a4a282daf1a190f03790bf163458ea3c8d28d217