CVE-2023-52452

bpf: Fix accesses to uninit stack slots

published February 22, 2024

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
14.1
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

bpf: Fix accesses to uninit stack slots

Privileged programs are supposed to be able to read uninitialized stack

memory (ever since 6715df8d5) but, before this patch, these accesses

were permitted inconsistently. In particular, accesses were permitted

above state->allocated_stack, but not below it. In other words, if the

stack was already "large enough", the access was permitted, but

otherwise the access was rejected instead of being allowed to "grow the

stack". This undesired rejection was happening in two places:

- in check_stack_slot_within_bounds()

- in check_stack_range_initialized()

This patch arranges for these accesses to be permitted. A bunch of tests

that were relying on the old rejection had to change; all of them were

changed to add also run unprivileged, in which case the old behavior

persists. One tests couldn't be updated - global_func16 - because it

can't run unprivileged for other reasons.

This patch also fixes the tracking of the stack size for variable-offset

reads. This second fix is bundled in the same commit as the first one

because they're inter-related. Before this patch, writes to the stack

using registers containing a variable offset (as opposed to registers

with fixed, known values) were not properly contributing to the

function's needed stack size. As a result, it was possible for a program

to verify, but then to attempt to read out-of-bounds data at runtime

because a too small stack had been allocated for it.

Each function tracks the size of the stack it needs in

bpf_subprog_info.stack_depth, which is maintained by

update_stack_depth(). For regular memory accesses, check_mem_access()

was calling update_state_depth() but it was passing in only the fixed

part of the offset register, ignoring the variable offset. This was

incorrect; the minimum possible value of that register should be used

instead.

This tracking is now fixed by centralizing the tracking of stack size in

grow_stack_state(), and by lifting the calls to grow_stack_state() to

check_stack_access_within_bounds() as suggested by Andrii. The code is

now simpler and more convincingly tracks the correct maximum stack size.

check_stack_range_initialized() can now rely on enough stack having been

allocated for the access; this helps with the fix for the first issue.

A few tests were changed to also check the stack depth computation. The

one that fails without this patch is verifier_var_off:stack_write_priv_vs_unpriv.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00239 · 14.1th percentile
Published
2024-02-22T16:21Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 22 FEB 16:21Z
    bpf: Fix accesses to uninit stack slots
    cvelistv5