CVE-2024-56678 powerpc/mm/fault: Fix kfence page fault reporting
A local attacker can trigger a kernel crash by reading /proc/kcore, causing a use-after-free error in the KFENCE memory debugging subsystem.
- 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-2024-56678?
CVE-2024-56678 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 28 Dec 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:
powerpc/mm/fault: Fix kfence page fault reporting
copy_from_kernel_nofault() can be called when doing read of /proc/kcore. /proc/kcore can have some unmapped kfence objects which when read via copy_from_kernel_nofault() can cause page faults. Since *_nofault() functions define their own fixup table for handling fault, use that instead of asking kfence to handle such faults.
Hence we search the exception tables for the nip which generated the fault. If there is an entry then we let the fixup table handler handle the page fault by returning an error from within ___do_page_fault().
This can be easily triggered if someone tries to do dd from /proc/kcore. eg. dd if=/proc/kcore of=/dev/null bs=1M
Some example false negatives:
=============================== BUG: KFENCE: invalid read in copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 Invalid read at 0xc0000000fdff0000: copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 0xc00000000665f950 read_kcore_iter+0x57c/0xa04 proc_reg_read_iter+0xe4/0x16c vfs_read+0x320/0x3ec ksys_read+0x90/0x154 system_call_exception+0x120/0x310 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec
BUG: KFENCE: use-after-free read in copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 Use-after-free read at 0xc0000000fe050000 (in kfence-#2): copy_from_kernel_nofault+0x9c/0x1a0 0xc00000000665f950 read_kcore_iter+0x57c/0xa04 proc_reg_read_iter+0xe4/0x16c vfs_read+0x320/0x3ec ksys_read+0x90/0x154 system_call_exception+0x120/0x310 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec
Weakness: CWE-416
Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-56678?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2024-56678?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2024-56678 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-56678 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2024-56678, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-56678, GHSA-v5r3-wf29-qq37, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-56678.