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

CVE-2021-46988

Disclosure Date: February 28, 2024
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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

userfaultfd: release page in error path to avoid BUG_ON

Consider the following sequence of events:

  1. Userspace issues a UFFD ioctl, which ends up calling into
    shmem_mfill_atomic_pte(). We successfully account the blocks, we
    shmem_alloc_page(), but then the copy_from_user() fails. We return
    -ENOENT. We don’t release the page we allocated.
  2. Our caller detects this error code, tries the copy_from_user() after
    dropping the mmap_lock, and retries, calling back into
    shmem_mfill_atomic_pte().
  3. Meanwhile, let’s say another process filled up the tmpfs being used.
  4. So shmem_mfill_atomic_pte() fails to account blocks this time, and
    immediately returns – without releasing the page.

This triggers a BUG_ON in our caller, which asserts that the page
should always be consumed, unless -ENOENT is returned.

To fix this, detect if we have such a “dangling” page when accounting
fails, and if so, release it before returning.

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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

Technical Analysis