Linux Kernel up to 6.10.4 idpf vport_open memory leak

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.10.4. It has been classified as critical. The impacted element is the function vport_open of the component idpf. This manipulation causes memory leak. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-44964. No exploit exists. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Linux Kernel up to 6.10.4 and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is the function vport_open of the component idpf. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a memory leak vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-401. The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: idpf: fix memory leaks and crashes while performing a soft reset The second tagged commit introduced a UAF, as it removed restoring q_vector->vport pointers after reinitializating the structures. This is due to that all queue allocation functions are performed here with the new temporary vport structure and those functions rewrite the backpointers to the vport. Then, this new struct is freed and the pointers start leading to nowhere. But generally speaking, the current logic is very fragile. It claims to be more reliable when the system is low on memory, but in fact, it consumes two times more memory as at the moment of running this function, there are two vports allocated with their queues and vectors. Moreover, it claims to prevent the driver from running into "bad state", but in fact, any error during the rebuild leaves the old vport in the partially allocated state. Finally, if the interface is down when the function is called, it always allocates a new queue set, but when the user decides to enable the interface later on, vport_open() allocates them once again, IOW there's a clear memory leak here. Just don't allocate a new queue set when performing a reset, that solves crashes and memory leaks. Readd the old queue number and reopen the interface on rollback - that solves limbo states when the device is left disabled and/or without HW queues enabled.

It is possible to read the advisory at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2024-44964 since 08/21/2024. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 213014 (SUSE SLES15 / openSUSE 15 Security Update : kernel (SUSE-SU-2024:4315-1)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.10.5 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 6b289f8d9153/f01032a2ca09 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (213014). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.10.0
• 6.10.1
• 6.10.2
• 6.10.3
• 6.10.4

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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