CVE-2023-52839 drivers: perf: Do not broadcast to other cpus when starting a counter

Low 3.3 Published Updated

A local attacker can trigger a kernel warning and potential instability by running specific perf commands on RISC-V systems.

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-2023-52839?

CVE-2023-52839 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 May 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:

drivers: perf: Do not broadcast to other cpus when starting a counter

This command:

$ perf record -e cycles:k -e instructions:k -c 10000 -m 64M dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null count=1000

gives rise to this kernel warning:

[ 444.364395] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 104 at kernel/smp.c:775 smp_call_function_many_cond+0x42c/0x436 [ 444.364515] Modules linked in: [ 444.364657] CPU: 0 PID: 104 Comm: perf-exec Not tainted 6.6.0-rc6-00051-g391df82e8ec3-dirty #73 [ 444.364771] Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) [ 444.364868] epc : smp_call_function_many_cond+0x42c/0x436 [ 444.364917] ra : on_each_cpu_cond_mask+0x20/0x32 [ 444.364948] epc : ffffffff8009f9e0 ra : ffffffff8009fa5a sp : ff20000000003800 [ 444.364966] gp : ffffffff81500aa0 tp : ff60000002b83000 t0 : ff200000000038c0 [ 444.364982] t1 : ffffffff815021f0 t2 : 000000000000001f s0 : ff200000000038b0 [ 444.364998] s1 : ff60000002c54d98 a0 : ff60000002a73940 a1 : 0000000000000000 [ 444.365013] a2 : 0000000000000000 a3 : 0000000000000003 a4 : 0000000000000100 [ 444.365029] a5 : 0000000000010100 a6 : 0000000000f00000 a7 : 0000000000000000 [ 444.365044] s2 : 0000000000000000 s3 : ffffffffffffffff s4 : ff60000002c54d98 [ 444.365060] s5 : ffffffff81539610 s6 : ffffffff80c20c48 s7 : 0000000000000000 [ 444.365075] s8 : 0000000000000000 s9 : 0000000000000001 s10: 0000000000000001 [ 444.365090] s11: ffffffff80099394 t3 : 0000000000000003 t4 : 00000000eac0c6e6 [ 444.365104] t5 : 0000000400000000 t6 : ff60000002e010d0 [ 444.365120] status: 0000000200000100 badaddr: 0000000000000000 cause: 0000000000000003 [ 444.365226] [<ffffffff8009f9e0>] smp_call_function_many_cond+0x42c/0x436 [ 444.365295] [<ffffffff8009fa5a>] on_each_cpu_cond_mask+0x20/0x32 [ 444.365311] [<ffffffff806e90dc>] pmu_sbi_ctr_start+0x7a/0xaa [ 444.365327] [<ffffffff806e880c>] riscv_pmu_start+0x48/0x66 [ 444.365339] [<ffffffff8012111a>] perf_adjust_freq_unthr_context+0x196/0x1ac [ 444.365356] [<ffffffff801237aa>] perf_event_task_tick+0x78/0x8c [ 444.365368] [<ffffffff8003faf4>] scheduler_tick+0xe6/0x25e [ 444.365383] [<ffffffff8008a042>] update_process_times+0x80/0x96 [ 444.365398] [<ffffffff800991ec>] tick_sched_handle+0x26/0x52 [ 444.365410] [<ffffffff800993e4>] tick_sched_timer+0x50/0x98 [ 444.365422] [<ffffffff8008a6aa>] __hrtimer_run_queues+0x126/0x18a [ 444.365433] [<ffffffff8008b350>] hrtimer_interrupt+0xce/0x1da [ 444.365444] [<ffffffff806cdc60>] riscv_timer_interrupt+0x30/0x3a [ 444.365457] [<ffffffff8006afa6>] handle_percpu_devid_irq+0x80/0x114 [ 444.365470] [<ffffffff80065b82>] generic_handle_domain_irq+0x1c/0x2a [ 444.365483] [<ffffffff8045faec>] riscv_intc_irq+0x2e/0x46 [ 444.365497] [<ffffffff808a9c62>] handle_riscv_irq+0x4a/0x74 [ 444.365521] [<ffffffff808aa760>] do_irq+0x7c/0x7e [ 444.365796] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

That's because the fix in commit 3fec323339a4 ("drivers: perf: Fix panic in riscv SBI mmap support") was wrong since there is no need to broadcast to other cpus when starting a counter, that's only needed in mmap when the counters could have already been started on other cpus, so simply remove this broadcast.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52839?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2023-52839?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2023-52839 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-52839 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-52839, GHSA-r823-qmw9-v7xf, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52839.

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