CVE-2024-35853 mlxsw: spectrum_acl_tcam: Fix memory leak during rehash

What is CVE-2024-35853?

CVE-2024-35853 is a medium-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 17 May 2024. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

mlxsw: spectrum_acl_tcam: Fix memory leak during rehash

The rehash delayed work migrates filters from one region to another. This is done by iterating over all chunks (all the filters with the same priority) in the region and in each chunk iterating over all the filters.

If the migration fails, the code tries to migrate the filters back to the old region. However, the rollback itself can also fail in which case another migration will be erroneously performed. Besides the fact that this ping pong is not a very good idea, it also creates a problem.

Each virtual chunk references two chunks: The currently used one ('vchunk->chunk') and a backup ('vchunk->chunk2'). During migration the first holds the chunk we want to migrate filters to and the second holds the chunk we are migrating filters from.

The code currently assumes - but does not verify - that the backup chunk does not exist (NULL) if the currently used chunk does not reference the target region. This assumption breaks when we are trying to rollback a rollback, resulting in the backup chunk being overwritten and leaked [1].

Fix by not rolling back a failed rollback and add a warning to avoid future cases.

[1] WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 1063 at lib/parman.c:291 parman_destroy+0x17/0x20 Modules linked in: CPU: 5 PID: 1063 Comm: kworker/5:11 Tainted: G W 6.9.0-rc2-custom-00784-gc6a05c468a0b #14 Hardware name: Mellanox Technologies Ltd. MSN3700/VMOD0005, BIOS 5.11 01/06/2019 Workqueue: mlxsw_core mlxsw_sp_acl_tcam_vregion_rehash_work RIP: 0010:parman_destroy+0x17/0x20 [...] Call Trace: <TASK> mlxsw_sp_acl_atcam_region_fini+0x19/0x60 mlxsw_sp_acl_tcam_region_destroy+0x49/0xf0 mlxsw_sp_acl_tcam_vregion_rehash_work+0x1f1/0x470 process_one_work+0x151/0x370 worker_thread+0x2cb/0x3e0 kthread+0xd0/0x100 ret_from_fork+0x34/0x50 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK>

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-35853?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-35853?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2024-35853 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-35853 in the wild and no public exploit code.

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Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as AZL-42114, BELL-CVE-2024-35853, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-35853, GHSA-c5j5-pffr-9wgm, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-35853.