High · published December 9, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
blk-mq: release crypto keyslot before reporting I/O complete
Once all I/O using a blk_crypto_key has completed, filesystems can call
blk_crypto_evict_key(). However, the block layer currently doesn't call
blk_crypto_put_keyslot() until the request is being freed, which happens
after upper layers have been told (via bio_endio()) the I/O has
completed. This causes a race condition where blk_crypto_evict_key()
can see 'slot_refs != 0' without there being an actual bug.
This makes __blk_crypto_evict_key() hit the
'WARN_ON_ONCE(atomic_read(&slot->slot_refs) != 0)' and return without
doing anything, eventually causing a use-after-free in
blk_crypto_reprogram_all_keys(). (This is a very rare bug and has only
been seen when per-file keys are being used with fscrypt.)
There are two options to fix this: either release the keyslot before
bio_endio() is called on the request's last bio, or make
__blk_crypto_evict_key() ignore slot_refs. Let's go with the first
solution, since it preserves the ability to report bugs (via
WARN_ON_ONCE) where a key is evicted while still in-use.