CVE-2023-53709

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

ring-buffer: Handle race between rb_move_tail and rb_check_pages

It seems a data race between ring_buffer writing and integrity check. That is, RB_FLAG of head_page is been updating, while at same time RB_FLAG was cleared when doing integrity check rb_check_pages():

rb_check_pages() rb_handle_head_page():

rb_head_page_deactivate() rb_head_page_set_normal() rb_head_page_activate()

We do intergrity test of the list to check if the list is corrupted and it is still worth doing it. So, let's refactor rb_check_pages() such that we no longer clear and set flag during the list sanity checking.

[1] and [2] are the test to reproduce and the crash report respectively.

1:

  while true;
  do
    # the "trace" file is closed after read
    head -1 /sys/kernel/tracing/trace > /dev/null
  done

  sysctl -w kernel.panic_on_warn=1
  # function tracer will writing enough data into ring_buffer
  echo function > /sys/kernel/tracing/current_tracer
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &
  ./read_trace.sh &

2: ------------[ cut here ]------------ WARNING: CPU: 9 PID: 62 at kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c:2653 rb_move_tail+0x450/0x470 Modules linked in: CPU: 9 PID: 62 Comm: ksoftirqd/9 Tainted: G W 6.2.0-rc6+ Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.15.0-0-g2dd4b9b3f840-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:rb_move_tail+0x450/0x470 Code: ff ff 4c 89 c8 f0 4d 0f b1 02 48 89 c2 48 83 e2 fc 49 39 d0 75 24 83 e0 03 83 f8 02 0f 84 e1 fb ff ff 48 8b 57 10 f0 ff 42 08 <0f> 0b 83 f8 02 0f 84 ce fb ff ff e9 db RSP: 0018:ffffb5564089bd00 EFLAGS: 00000203 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff9db385a2bf81 RCX: ffffb5564089bd18 RDX: ffff9db281110100 RSI: 0000000000000fe4 RDI: ffff9db380145400 RBP: ffff9db385a2bf80 R08: ffff9db385a2bfc0 R09: ffff9db385a2bfc2 R10: ffff9db385a6c000 R11: ffff9db385a2bf80 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 00000000000003e8 R14: ffff9db281110100 R15: ffffffffbb006108 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff9db3bdcc0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00005602323024c8 CR3: 0000000022e0c000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 Call Trace: ring_buffer_lock_reserve+0x136/0x360 ? __do_softirq+0x287/0x2df ? __pfx_rcu_softirq_qs+0x10/0x10 trace_function+0x21/0x110 ? __pfx_rcu_softirq_qs+0x10/0x10 ? __do_softirq+0x287/0x2df function_trace_call+0xf6/0x120 0xffffffffc038f097 ? rcu_softirq_qs+0x5/0x140 rcu_softirq_qs+0x5/0x140 __do_softirq+0x287/0x2df run_ksoftirqd+0x2a/0x30 smpboot_thread_fn+0x188/0x220 ? __pfx_smpboot_thread_fn+0x10/0x10 kthread+0xe7/0x110 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork+0x2c/0x50 ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

[ crash report and test reproducer credit goes to Zheng Yejian]