Attacker Value
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
Exploitability
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
User Interaction
None
Privileges Required
Low
Attack Vector
Local
0

CVE-2024-54680

Disclosure Date: January 11, 2025
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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

smb: client: fix TCP timers deadlock after rmmod

Commit ef7134c7fc48 (“smb: client: Fix use-after-free of network namespace.”)
fixed a netns UAF by manually enabled socket refcounting
(sk->sk_net_refcnt=1 and sock_inuse_add(net, 1)).

The reason the patch worked for that bug was because we now hold
references to the netns (get_net_track() gets a ref internally)
and they’re properly released (internally, on __sk_destruct()),
but only because sk->sk_net_refcnt was set.

Problem:
(this happens regardless of CONFIG_NET_NS_REFCNT_TRACKER and regardless
if init_net or other)

Setting sk->sk_net_refcnt=1 manually and after socket creation is not
only out of cifs scope, but also technically wrong — it’s set conditionally
based on user (=1) vs kernel (=0) sockets. And net/ implementations
seem to base their user vs kernel space operations on it.

e.g. upon TCP socket close, the TCP timers are not cleared because
sk->sk_net_refcnt=1:
(cf. commit 151c9c724d05 (“tcp: properly terminate timers for kernel sockets”))

net/ipv4/tcp.c:

void tcp_close(struct sock *sk, long timeout)
{
	lock_sock(sk);
	__tcp_close(sk, timeout);
	release_sock(sk);
	if (!sk->sk_net_refcnt)
		inet_csk_clear_xmit_timers_sync(sk);
	sock_put(sk);
}

Which will throw a lockdep warning and then, as expected, deadlock on
tcp_write_timer().

A way to reproduce this is by running the reproducer from ef7134c7fc48
and then ‘rmmod cifs’. A few seconds later, the deadlock/lockdep
warning shows up.

Fix:
We shouldn’t mess with socket internals ourselves, so do not set
sk_net_refcnt manually.

Also change __sock_create() to sock_create_kern() for explicitness.

As for non-init_net network namespaces, we deal with it the best way
we can — hold an extra netns reference for server->ssocket and drop it
when it’s released. This ensures that the netns still exists whenever
we need to create/destroy server->ssocket, but is not directly tied to
it.

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CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
Base Score:
5.5 Medium
Impact Score:
3.6
Exploitability Score:
1.8
Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack Vector (AV):
Local
Attack Complexity (AC):
Low
Privileges Required (PR):
Low
User Interaction (UI):
None
Scope (S):
Unchanged
Confidentiality (C):
None
Integrity (I):
None
Availability (A):
High

General Information

Additional Info

Technical Analysis