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

CVE-2024-40910

Disclosure Date: July 12, 2024
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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

ax25: Fix refcount imbalance on inbound connections

When releasing a socket in ax25_release(), we call netdev_put() to
decrease the refcount on the associated ax.25 device. However, the
execution path for accepting an incoming connection never calls
netdev_hold(). This imbalance leads to refcount errors, and ultimately
to kernel crashes.

A typical call trace for the above situation will start with one of the
following errors:

refcount_t: decrement hit 0; leaking memory.
refcount_t: underflow; use-after-free.

And will then have a trace like:

Call Trace:
<TASK>
? show_regs+0x64/0x70
? __warn+0x83/0x120
? refcount_warn_saturate+0xb2/0x100
? report_bug+0x158/0x190
? prb_read_valid+0x20/0x30
? handle_bug+0x3e/0x70
? exc_invalid_op+0x1c/0x70
? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1f/0x30
? refcount_warn_saturate+0xb2/0x100
? refcount_warn_saturate+0xb2/0x100
ax25_release+0x2ad/0x360
__sock_release+0x35/0xa0
sock_close+0x19/0x20
[...]

On reboot (or any attempt to remove the interface), the kernel gets
stuck in an infinite loop:

unregister_netdevice: waiting for ax0 to become free. Usage count = 0

This patch corrects these issues by ensuring that we call netdev_hold()
and ax25_dev_hold() for new connections in ax25_accept(). This makes the
logic leading to ax25_accept() match the logic for ax25_bind(): in both
cases we increment the refcount, which is ultimately decremented in
ax25_release().

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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

Vendors

  • linux

Products

  • linux kernel,
  • linux kernel 6.10
Technical Analysis