CVE-2024-56702

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

bpf: Mark raw_tp arguments with PTR_MAYBE_NULL

Arguments to a raw tracepoint are tagged as trusted, which carries the semantics that the pointer will be non-NULL. However, in certain cases, a raw tracepoint argument may end up being NULL. More context about this issue is available in 0.

Thus, there is a discrepancy between the reality, that raw_tp arguments can actually be NULL, and the verifiers knowledge, that they are never NULL, causing explicit NULL checks to be deleted, and accesses to such pointers potentially crashing the kernel.

To fix this, mark raw_tp arguments as PTR_MAYBE_NULL, and then special case the dereference and pointer arithmetic to permit it, and allow passing them into helpers/kfuncs; these exceptions are made for raw_tp programs only. Ensure that we dont do this when ref_obj_id > 0, as in that case this is an acquired object and doesnt need such adjustment.

The reason we do mask_raw_tp_trusted_reg logic is because other will recheck in places whether the register is a trusted_reg, and then consider our register as untrusted when detecting the presence of the PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag.

To allow safe dereference, we enable PROBE_MEM marking when we see loads into trusted pointers with PTR_MAYBE_NULL.

While trusted raw_tp arguments can also be passed into helpers or kfuncs where such broken assumption may cause issues, a future patch set will tackle their case separately, as PTR_TO_BTF_ID (without PTR_TRUSTED) can already be passed into helpers and causes similar problems. Thus, they are left alone for now.

It is possible that these checks also permit passing non-raw_tp args that are trusted PTR_TO_BTF_ID with null marking. In such a case, allowing dereference when pointer is NULL expands allowed behavior, so wont regress existing programs, and the case of passing these into helpers is the same as above and will be dealt with later.

Also update the failure case in tp_btf_nullable selftest to capture the new behavior, as the verifier will no longer cause an error when directly dereference a raw tracepoint argument marked as __nullable.

Weakness

A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3634d4a310820567fc634bf8f1ee2b91378773e8
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c9b91d2d54175f781ad2c361cb2ac2c0e29b14b6
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cb4158ce8ec8a5bb528cc1693356a5eb8058094d