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CVE-2024-26960
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Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm: swap: fix race between free_swap_and_cache() and swapoff()
There was previously a theoretical window where swapoff() could run and
teardown a swap_info_struct while a call to free_swap_and_cache() was
running in another thread. This could cause, amongst other bad
possibilities, swap_page_trans_huge_swapped() (called by
free_swap_and_cache()) to access the freed memory for swap_map.
This is a theoretical problem and I haven’t been able to provoke it from a
test case. But there has been agreement based on code review that this is
possible (see link below).
Fix it by using get_swap_device()/put_swap_device(), which will stall
swapoff(). There was an extra check in _swap_info_get() to confirm that
the swap entry was not free. This isn’t present in get_swap_device()
because it doesn’t make sense in general due to the race between getting
the reference and swapoff. So I’ve added an equivalent check directly in
free_swap_and_cache().
Details of how to provoke one possible issue (thanks to David Hildenbrand
for deriving this):
—8<——-
__swap_entry_free() might be the last user and result in
“count == SWAP_HAS_CACHE”.
swapoff->try_to_unuse() will stop as soon as soon as si->inuse_pages==0.
So the question is: could someone reclaim the folio and turn
si->inuse_pages==0, before we completed swap_page_trans_huge_swapped().
Imagine the following: 2 MiB folio in the swapcache. Only 2 subpages are
still references by swap entries.
Process 1 still references subpage 0 via swap entry.
Process 2 still references subpage 1 via swap entry.
Process 1 quits. Calls free_swap_and_cache().
–> count == SWAP_HAS_CACHE
[then, preempted in the hypervisor etc.]
Process 2 quits. Calls free_swap_and_cache().
–> count == SWAP_HAS_CACHE
Process 2 goes ahead, passes swap_page_trans_huge_swapped(), and calls
__try_to_reclaim_swap().
__try_to_reclaim_swap()–>folio_free_swap()–>delete_from_swap_cache()–>
put_swap_folio()–>free_swap_slot()–>swapcache_free_entries()–>
swap_entry_free()–>swap_range_free()–>
…
WRITE_ONCE(si->inuse_pages, si->inuse_pages – nr_entries);
What stops swapoff to succeed after process 2 reclaimed the swap cache
but before process1 finished its call to swap_page_trans_huge_swapped()?
—8<——-
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