CVE-2024-53097 mm: krealloc: Fix MTE false alarm in __do_krealloc

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A false positive MTE error in the Linux kernel's krealloc function can cause a kernel panic, leading to denial of service.

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-2024-53097?

CVE-2024-53097 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Nov 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:

mm: krealloc: Fix MTE false alarm in __do_krealloc

This patch addresses an issue introduced by commit 1a83a716ec233 ("mm: krealloc: consider spare memory for __GFP_ZERO") which causes MTE (Memory Tagging Extension) to falsely report a slab-out-of-bounds error.

The problem occurs when zeroing out spare memory in __do_krealloc. The original code only considered software-based KASAN and did not account for MTE. It does not reset the KASAN tag before calling memset, leading to a mismatch between the pointer tag and the memory tag, resulting in a false positive.

Example of the error: ================================================================== swapper/0: BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in __memset+0x84/0x188 swapper/0: Write at addr f4ffff8005f0fdf0 by task swapper/0/1 swapper/0: Pointer tag: [f4], memory tag: [fe] swapper/0: swapper/0: CPU: 4 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.12. swapper/0: Hardware name: MT6991(ENG) (DT) swapper/0: Call trace: swapper/0: dump_backtrace+0xfc/0x17c swapper/0: show_stack+0x18/0x28 swapper/0: dump_stack_lvl+0x40/0xa0 swapper/0: print_report+0x1b8/0x71c swapper/0: kasan_report+0xec/0x14c swapper/0: __do_kernel_fault+0x60/0x29c swapper/0: do_bad_area+0x30/0xdc swapper/0: do_tag_check_fault+0x20/0x34 swapper/0: do_mem_abort+0x58/0x104 swapper/0: el1_abort+0x3c/0x5c swapper/0: el1h_64_sync_handler+0x80/0xcc swapper/0: el1h_64_sync+0x68/0x6c swapper/0: __memset+0x84/0x188 swapper/0: btf_populate_kfunc_set+0x280/0x3d8 swapper/0: __register_btf_kfunc_id_set+0x43c/0x468 swapper/0: register_btf_kfunc_id_set+0x48/0x60 swapper/0: register_nf_nat_bpf+0x1c/0x40 swapper/0: nf_nat_init+0xc0/0x128 swapper/0: do_one_initcall+0x184/0x464 swapper/0: do_initcall_level+0xdc/0x1b0 swapper/0: do_initcalls+0x70/0xc0 swapper/0: do_basic_setup+0x1c/0x28 swapper/0: kernel_init_freeable+0x144/0x1b8 swapper/0: kernel_init+0x20/0x1a8 swapper/0: ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 ==================================================================

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-53097?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-53097?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2024-53097 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-53097 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as AZL-54635, BELL-CVE-2024-53097, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-53097, GHSA-pg27-6936-jg2x, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-53097.

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