CVE-2022-48760

USB: core: Fix hang in usb_kill_urb by adding memory barriers

published June 20, 2024

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
7.7
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

USB: core: Fix hang in usb_kill_urb by adding memory barriers

The syzbot fuzzer has identified a bug in which processes hang waiting

for usb_kill_urb() to return. It turns out the issue is not unlinking

the URB; that works just fine. Rather, the problem arises when the

wakeup notification that the URB has completed is not received.

The reason is memory-access ordering on SMP systems. In outline form,

usb_kill_urb() and __usb_hcd_giveback_urb() operating concurrently on

different CPUs perform the following actions:

CPU 0 CPU 1

---------------------------- ---------------------------------

usb_kill_urb(): __usb_hcd_giveback_urb():

... ...

atomic_inc(&urb->reject); atomic_dec(&urb->use_count);

... ...

wait_event(usb_kill_urb_queue,

atomic_read(&urb->use_count) == 0);

if (atomic_read(&urb->reject))

wake_up(&usb_kill_urb_queue);

Confining your attention to urb->reject and urb->use_count, you can

see that the overall pattern of accesses on CPU 0 is:

write urb->reject, then read urb->use_count;

whereas the overall pattern of accesses on CPU 1 is:

write urb->use_count, then read urb->reject.

This pattern is referred to in memory-model circles as SB (for "Store

Buffering"), and it is well known that without suitable enforcement of

the desired order of accesses -- in the form of memory barriers -- it

is entirely possible for one or both CPUs to execute their reads ahead

of their writes. The end result will be that sometimes CPU 0 sees the

old un-decremented value of urb->use_count while CPU 1 sees the old

un-incremented value of urb->reject. Consequently CPU 0 ends up on

the wait queue and never gets woken up, leading to the observed hang

in usb_kill_urb().

The same pattern of accesses occurs in usb_poison_urb() and the

failure pathway of usb_hcd_submit_urb().

The problem is fixed by adding suitable memory barriers. To provide

proper memory-access ordering in the SB pattern, a full barrier is

required on both CPUs. The atomic_inc() and atomic_dec() accesses

themselves don't provide any memory ordering, but since they are

present, we can use the optimized smp_mb__after_atomic() memory

barrier in the various routines to obtain the desired effect.

This patch adds the necessary memory barriers.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00186 · 7.7th percentile
Published
2024-06-20T11:13Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 20 JUN 11:13Z
    USB: core: Fix hang in usb_kill_urb by adding memory barriers
    cvelistv5