CVE-2025-38417

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

ice: fix eswitch code memory leak in reset scenario

Add simple eswitch mode checker in attaching VF procedure and allocate required port representor memory structures only in switchdev mode. The reset flows triggers VF (if present) detach/attach procedure. It might involve VF port representor(s) re-creation if the device is configured is switchdev mode (not legacy one). The memory was blindly allocated in current implementation, regardless of the mode and not freed if in legacy mode.

Kmemeleak trace: unreferenced object (percpu) 0x7e3bce5b888458 (size 40): comm bash, pid 1784, jiffies 4295743894 hex dump (first 32 bytes on cpu 45): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ……………. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ……………. backtrace (crc 0): pcpu_alloc_noprof+0x4c4/0x7c0 ice_repr_create+0x66/0x130 [ice] ice_repr_create_vf+0x22/0x70 [ice] ice_eswitch_attach_vf+0x1b/0xa0 [ice] ice_reset_all_vfs+0x1dd/0x2f0 [ice] ice_pci_err_resume+0x3b/0xb0 [ice] pci_reset_function+0x8f/0x120 reset_store+0x56/0xa0 kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x120/0x1b0 vfs_write+0x31c/0x430 ksys_write+0x61/0xd0 do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x180 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

Testing hints (ethX is PF netdev):

• create at least one VF echo 1 > /sys/class/net/ethX/device/sriov_numvfs
• trigger the reset echo 1 > /sys/class/net/ethX/device/reset

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

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/48c8b214974dc55283bd5f12e3a483b27c403bbc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d6715193de439b79f1d6a4c03593c7529239b545
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e97a7a051b55f55f276c1568491d0ed7f890ee94