CVE-2025-22089

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

RDMA/core: Dont expose hw_counters outside of init net namespace

Commit 467f432a521a (RDMA/core: Split port and device counter sysfs attributes) accidentally almost exposed hw counters to non-init net namespaces. It didnt expose them fully, as an attempt to read any of those counters leads to a crash like this one:

[42021.807566] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000028 [42021.814463] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode [42021.819549] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page [42021.824636] PGD 0 P4D 0 [42021.827145] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP PTI [42021.830598] CPU: 82 PID: 2843922 Comm: switchto-defaul Kdump: loaded Tainted: G S W I XXX [42021.841697] Hardware name: XXX [42021.849619] RIP: 0010:hw_stat_device_show+0x1e/0x40 [ib_core] [42021.855362] Code: 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 f3 0f 1e fa 0f 1f 44 00 00 49 89 d0 4c 8b 5e 20 48 8b 8f b8 04 00 00 48 81 c7 f0 fa ff ff <48> 8b 41 28 48 29 ce 48 83 c6 d0 48 c1 ee 04 69 d6 ab aa aa aa 48 [42021.873931] RSP: 0018:ffff97fe90f03da0 EFLAGS: 00010287 [42021.879108] RAX: ffff9406988a8c60 RBX: ffff940e1072d438 RCX: 0000000000000000 [42021.886169] RDX: ffff94085f1aa000 RSI: ffff93c6cbbdbcb0 RDI: ffff940c7517aef0 [42021.893230] RBP: ffff97fe90f03e70 R08: ffff94085f1aa000 R09: 0000000000000000 [42021.900294] R10: ffff94085f1aa000 R11: ffffffffc0775680 R12: ffffffff87ca2530 [42021.907355] R13: ffff940651602840 R14: ffff93c6cbbdbcb0 R15: ffff94085f1aa000 [42021.914418] FS: 00007fda1a3b9700(0000) GS:ffff94453fb80000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [42021.922423] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [42021.928130] CR2: 0000000000000028 CR3: 00000042dcfb8003 CR4: 00000000003726f0 [42021.935194] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [42021.942257] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [42021.949324] Call Trace: [42021.951756] [42021.953842] [] ? show_regs+0x64/0x70 [42021.959030] [] ? __die+0x78/0xc0 [42021.963874] [] ? page_fault_oops+0x2b5/0x3b0 [42021.969749] [] ? exc_page_fault+0x1a2/0x3c0 [42021.975549] [] ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x26/0x30 [42021.981517] [] ? __pfx_show_hw_stats+0x10/0x10 [ib_core] [42021.988482] [] ? hw_stat_device_show+0x1e/0x40 [ib_core] [42021.995438] [] dev_attr_show+0x1e/0x50 [42022.000803] [] sysfs_kf_seq_show+0x81/0xe0 [42022.006508] [] seq_read_iter+0xf4/0x410 [42022.011954] [] vfs_read+0x16e/0x2f0 [42022.017058] [] ksys_read+0x6e/0xe0 [42022.022073] [] do_syscall_64+0x6a/0xa0 [42022.027441] [] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x78/0xe2

The problem can be reproduced using the following steps: ip netns add foo ip netns exec foo bash cat /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/hw_counters/*

The panic occurs because of casting the device pointer into an ib_device pointer using container_of() in hw_stat_device_show() is wrong and leads to a memory corruption.

However the real problem is that hw counters should never been exposed outside of the non-init net namespace.

Fix this by saving the index of the corresponding attribute group (it might be 1 or 2 depending on the presence of driver-specific attributes) and zeroing the pointer to hw_counters group for compat devices during the initialization.

With this fix applied hw_counters are not available in a non-init net namespace: find /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/ -name hw_counters /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/ports/1/hw_counters /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/ports/2/hw_counters /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/hw_counters

ip netns add foo ip netns exec foo bash find /sys/class/infiniband/mlx4_0/ -name hw_counters

Weakness

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0cf80f924aecb5b2bebd4f4ad11b2efc676a0b78
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6682da5d8fd578a5068531d01633c9d2e4c8f12b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9a5b7f8842a90a5e6eeff37f9f6d814e61ea3529
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1ecb30f90856b0be4168ad51b8875148e285c1f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c14d9704f5d77a7c7fa46e2114b64a4f75b64e17
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d5212b99649c5740154f307e9e3d7fee9bf62773
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/df45ae2a4f1cdfda00c032839e12092e1f32c05e
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/05/msg00045.html