CVE-2024-56702CWE-476

CVE-2024-56702

Medium · published December 28, 2024

CVSS v3.1
5.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
11.4
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

bpf: Mark raw_tp arguments with PTR_MAYBE_NULL

Arguments to a raw tracepoint are tagged as trusted, which carries the

semantics that the pointer will be non-NULL. However, in certain cases,

a raw tracepoint argument may end up being NULL. More context about this

issue is available in [0].

Thus, there is a discrepancy between the reality, that raw_tp arguments

can actually be NULL, and the verifier's knowledge, that they are never

NULL, causing explicit NULL checks to be deleted, and accesses to such

pointers potentially crashing the kernel.

To fix this, mark raw_tp arguments as PTR_MAYBE_NULL, and then special

case the dereference and pointer arithmetic to permit it, and allow

passing them into helpers/kfuncs; these exceptions are made for raw_tp

programs only. Ensure that we don't do this when ref_obj_id > 0, as in

that case this is an acquired object and doesn't need such adjustment.

The reason we do mask_raw_tp_trusted_reg logic is because other will

recheck in places whether the register is a trusted_reg, and then

consider our register as untrusted when detecting the presence of the

PTR_MAYBE_NULL flag.

To allow safe dereference, we enable PROBE_MEM marking when we see loads

into trusted pointers with PTR_MAYBE_NULL.

While trusted raw_tp arguments can also be passed into helpers or kfuncs

where such broken assumption may cause issues, a future patch set will

tackle their case separately, as PTR_TO_BTF_ID (without PTR_TRUSTED) can

already be passed into helpers and causes similar problems. Thus, they

are left alone for now.

It is possible that these checks also permit passing non-raw_tp args

that are trusted PTR_TO_BTF_ID with null marking. In such a case,

allowing dereference when pointer is NULL expands allowed behavior, so

won't regress existing programs, and the case of passing these into

helpers is the same as above and will be dealt with later.

Also update the failure case in tp_btf_nullable selftest to capture the

new behavior, as the verifier will no longer cause an error when

directly dereference a raw tracepoint argument marked as __nullable.

[0]: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/[email protected]

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00216 · 11.4th percentile
Weakness
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference
Published
2024-12-28T15:15Z
Affected products (2)
ProductVersionsFixed in
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.2, < 6.11.116.11.11
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.12, < 6.12.26.12.2
References (4)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 28 DEC 09:46Z
    bpf: Mark raw_tp arguments with PTR_MAYBE_NULL
    cvelistv5