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CVE-2024-35981

Disclosure Date: May 20, 2024
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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

virtio_net: Do not send RSS key if it is not supported

There is a bug when setting the RSS options in virtio_net that can break
the whole machine, getting the kernel into an infinite loop.

Running the following command in any QEMU virtual machine with virtionet
will reproduce this problem:

# ethtool -X eth0  hfunc toeplitz

This is how the problem happens:

  1. ethtool_set_rxfh() calls virtnet_set_rxfh()

  2. virtnet_set_rxfh() calls virtnet_commit_rss_command()

  3. virtnet_commit_rss_command() populates 4 entries for the rss
    scatter-gather

  4. Since the command above does not have a key, then the last
    scatter-gatter entry will be zeroed, since rss_key_size == 0.
    sg_buf_size = vi->rss_key_size;

  5. This buffer is passed to qemu, but qemu is not happy with a buffer
    with zero length, and do the following in virtqueue_map_desc() (QEMU
    function):

if (!sz) {

  virtio_error(vdev, "virtio: zero sized buffers are not allowed");
  1. virtio_error() (also QEMU function) set the device as broken

    vdev->broken = true;

  2. Qemu bails out, and do not repond this crazy kernel.

  3. The kernel is waiting for the response to come back (function
    virtnet_send_command())

  4. The kernel is waiting doing the following :

    while (!virtqueue_get_buf(vi->cvq, &tmp) &&

     !virtqueue_is_broken(vi->cvq))
      cpu_relax();
    
  5. None of the following functions above is true, thus, the kernel
    loops here forever. Keeping in mind that virtqueue_is_broken() does
    not look at the qemu vdev->broken, so, it never realizes that the
    vitio is broken at QEMU side.

Fix it by not sending RSS commands if the feature is not available in
the device.

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CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
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Attack Vector (AV):
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General Information

Vendors

  • Linux

Products

  • Linux
Technical Analysis