CVE-2024-56678

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

powerpc/mm/fault: Fix kfence page fault reporting

copy_from_kernel_nofault() can be called when doing read of /proc/kcore. /proc/kcore can have some unmapped kfence objects which when read via copy_from_kernel_nofault() can cause page faults. Since *_nofault() functions define their own fixup table for handling fault, use that instead of asking kfence to handle such faults.

Hence we search the exception tables for the nip which generated the fault. If there is an entry then we let the fixup table handler handle the page fault by returning an error from within ___do_page_fault().

This can be easily triggered if someone tries to do dd from /proc/kcore. eg. dd if=/proc/kcore of=/dev/null bs=1M

Some example false negatives:

=============================== BUG: KFENCE: invalid read in copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 Invalid read at 0xc0000000fdff0000: copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 0xc00000000665f950 read_kcore_iter+0x57c/0xa04 proc_reg_read_iter+0xe4/0x16c vfs_read+0x320/0x3ec ksys_read+0x90/0x154 system_call_exception+0x120/0x310 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

BUG: KFENCE: use-after-free read in copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 Use-after-free read at 0xc0000000fe050000 (in kfence-#2): copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 0xc00000000665f950 read_kcore_iter+0x57c/0xa04 proc_reg_read_iter+0xe4/0x16c vfs_read+0x320/0x3ec ksys_read+0x90/0x154 system_call_exception+0x120/0x310 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/06dbbb4d5f7126b6307ab807cbf04ecfc459b933
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/15f78d2c3d1452645bd8b9da909b0ca266f83c43
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4d2655754e94741b159aa807b72ea85518a65fd5
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7eaeb7a49b6d16640f9f3c9074c05175d74c710b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9ea8d8bf9b625e8ad3be6b0432aecdc549914121
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0a470b5733c1fe068d5c58b0bb91ad539604bc6