CVE-2021-47608 bpf: Fix kernel address leakage in atomic fetch
Unprivileged users can leak kernel pointers via BPF atomic fetch operations, potentially aiding privilege escalation attacks.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2021-47608?
CVE-2021-47608 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 19 Jun 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Fix kernel address leakage in atomic fetch
The change in commit 37086bfdc737 ("bpf: Propagate stack bounds to registers in atomics w/ BPF_FETCH") around check_mem_access() handling is buggy since this would allow for unprivileged users to leak kernel pointers. For example, an atomic fetch/and with -1 on a stack destination which holds a spilled pointer will migrate the spilled register type into a scalar, which can then be exported out of the program (since scalar != pointer) by dumping it into a map value.
The original implementation of XADD was preventing this situation by using a double call to check_mem_access() one with BPF_READ and a subsequent one with BPF_WRITE, in both cases passing -1 as a placeholder value instead of register as per XADD semantics since it didn't contain a value fetch. The BPF_READ also included a check in check_stack_read_fixed_off() which rejects the program if the stack slot is of __is_pointer_value() if dst_regno < 0. The latter is to distinguish whether we're dealing with a regular stack spill/ fill or some arithmetical operation which is disallowed on non-scalars, see also 6e7e63cbb023 ("bpf: Forbid XADD on spilled pointers for unprivileged users") for more context on check_mem_access() and its handling of placeholder value -1.
One minimally intrusive option to fix the leak is for the BPF_FETCH case to initially check the BPF_READ case via check_mem_access() with -1 as register, followed by the actual load case with non-negative load_reg to propagate stack bounds to registers.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-47608?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2021-47608?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2021-47608 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-47608 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47608, GHSA-v7fm-vjvq-9fg6, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47608.