published May 24, 2024
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ipv6: fix memory leak in fib6_rule_suppress
The kernel leaks memory when a `fib` rule is present in IPv6 nftables
firewall rules and a suppress_prefix rule is present in the IPv6 routing
rules (used by certain tools such as wg-quick). In such scenarios, every
incoming packet will leak an allocation in `ip6_dst_cache` slab cache.
After some hours of `bpftrace`-ing and source code reading, I tracked
down the issue to ca7a03c41753 ("ipv6: do not free rt if
FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF is set on suppress rule").
The problem with that change is that the generic `args->flags` always have
`FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF` set[1][2] but the IPv6-specific flag
`RT6_LOOKUP_F_DST_NOREF` might not be, leading to `fib6_rule_suppress` not
decreasing the refcount when needed.
How to reproduce:
- Add the following nftables rule to a prerouting chain:
meta nfproto ipv6 fib saddr . mark . iif oif missing drop
This can be done with:
sudo nft create table inet test
sudo nft create chain inet test test_chain '{ type filter hook prerouting priority filter + 10; policy accept; }'
sudo nft add rule inet test test_chain meta nfproto ipv6 fib saddr . mark . iif oif missing drop
- Run:
sudo ip -6 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
- Watch `sudo slabtop -o | grep ip6_dst_cache` to see memory usage increase
with every incoming ipv6 packet.
This patch exposes the protocol-specific flags to the protocol
specific `suppress` function, and check the protocol-specific `flags`
argument for RT6_LOOKUP_F_DST_NOREF instead of the generic
FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF when decreasing the refcount, like this.
[1]: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ca7a03c4175366a92cee0ccc4fec0038c3266e26/net/ipv6/fib6_rules.c#L71
[2]: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ca7a03c4175366a92cee0ccc4fec0038c3266e26/net/ipv6/fib6_rules.c#L99