CVE-2024-36937 xdp: use flags field to disambiguate broadcast redirect

What is CVE-2024-36937?

CVE-2024-36937 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 30 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:

xdp: use flags field to disambiguate broadcast redirect

When redirecting a packet using XDP, the bpf_redirect_map() helper will set up the redirect destination information in struct bpf_redirect_info (using the __bpf_xdp_redirect_map() helper function), and the xdp_do_redirect() function will read this information after the XDP program returns and pass the frame on to the right redirect destination.

When using the BPF_F_BROADCAST flag to do multicast redirect to a whole map, __bpf_xdp_redirect_map() sets the 'map' pointer in struct bpf_redirect_info to point to the destination map to be broadcast. And xdp_do_redirect() reacts to the value of this map pointer to decide whether it's dealing with a broadcast or a single-value redirect. However, if the destination map is being destroyed before xdp_do_redirect() is called, the map pointer will be cleared out (by bpf_clear_redirect_map()) without waiting for any XDP programs to stop running. This causes xdp_do_redirect() to think that the redirect was to a single target, but the target pointer is also NULL (since broadcast redirects don't have a single target), so this causes a crash when a NULL pointer is passed to dev_map_enqueue().

To fix this, change xdp_do_redirect() to react directly to the presence of the BPF_F_BROADCAST flag in the 'flags' value in struct bpf_redirect_info to disambiguate between a single-target and a broadcast redirect. And only read the 'map' pointer if the broadcast flag is set, aborting if that has been cleared out in the meantime. This prevents the crash, while keeping the atomic (cmpxchg-based) clearing of the map pointer itself, and without adding any more checks in the non-broadcast fast path.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-36937?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-36937?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2024-36937 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-36937 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

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

Also known as BELL-CVE-2024-36937, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-36937, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-36937.