Vulnerabilities > CVE-2024-42241 - Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in Linux Kernel
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/shmem: disable PMD-sized page cache if needed For shmem files, it's possible that PMD-sized page cache can't be supported by xarray. For example, 512MB page cache on ARM64 when the base page size is 64KB can't be supported by xarray. It leads to errors as the following messages indicate when this sort of xarray entry is split. WARNING: CPU: 34 PID: 7578 at lib/xarray.c:1025 xas_split_alloc+0xf8/0x128 Modules linked in: binfmt_misc nft_fib_inet nft_fib_ipv4 nft_fib_ipv6 \ nft_fib nft_reject_inet nf_reject_ipv4 nf_reject_ipv6 nft_reject \ nft_ct nft_chain_nat nf_nat nf_conntrack nf_defrag_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv4 \ ip_set rfkill nf_tables nfnetlink vfat fat virtio_balloon drm fuse xfs \ libcrc32c crct10dif_ce ghash_ce sha2_ce sha256_arm64 sha1_ce virtio_net \ net_failover virtio_console virtio_blk failover dimlib virtio_mmio CPU: 34 PID: 7578 Comm: test Kdump: loaded Tainted: G W 6.10.0-rc5-gavin+ #9 Hardware name: QEMU KVM Virtual Machine, BIOS edk2-20240524-1.el9 05/24/2024 pstate: 83400005 (Nzcv daif +PAN -UAO +TCO +DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--) pc : xas_split_alloc+0xf8/0x128 lr : split_huge_page_to_list_to_order+0x1c4/0x720 sp : ffff8000882af5f0 x29: ffff8000882af5f0 x28: ffff8000882af650 x27: ffff8000882af768 x26: 0000000000000cc0 x25: 000000000000000d x24: ffff00010625b858 x23: ffff8000882af650 x22: ffffffdfc0900000 x21: 0000000000000000 x20: 0000000000000000 x19: ffffffdfc0900000 x18: 0000000000000000 x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000018000000000 x15: 52f8004000000000 x14: 0000e00000000000 x13: 0000000000002000 x12: 0000000000000020 x11: 52f8000000000000 x10: 52f8e1c0ffff6000 x9 : ffffbeb9619a681c x8 : 0000000000000003 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : ffff00010b02ddb0 x5 : ffffbeb96395e378 x4 : 0000000000000000 x3 : 0000000000000cc0 x2 : 000000000000000d x1 : 000000000000000c x0 : 0000000000000000 Call trace: xas_split_alloc+0xf8/0x128 split_huge_page_to_list_to_order+0x1c4/0x720 truncate_inode_partial_folio+0xdc/0x160 shmem_undo_range+0x2bc/0x6a8 shmem_fallocate+0x134/0x430 vfs_fallocate+0x124/0x2e8 ksys_fallocate+0x4c/0xa0 __arm64_sys_fallocate+0x24/0x38 invoke_syscall.constprop.0+0x7c/0xd8 do_el0_svc+0xb4/0xd0 el0_svc+0x44/0x1d8 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x134/0x150 el0t_64_sync+0x17c/0x180 Fix it by disabling PMD-sized page cache when HPAGE_PMD_ORDER is larger than MAX_PAGECACHE_ORDER. As Matthew Wilcox pointed, the page cache in a shmem file isn't represented by a multi-index entry and doesn't have this limitation when the xarry entry is split until commit 6b24ca4a1a8d ("mm: Use multi-index entries in the page cache").
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Locate and Exploit Test APIs An attacker exploits a sample, demonstration, or test API that is insecure by default and should not be resident on production systems. Some applications include APIs that are intended to allow an administrator to test and refine their domain. These APIs should usually be disabled once a system enters a production environment. Testing APIs may expose a great deal of diagnostic information intended to aid an administrator, but which can also be used by an attacker to further refine their attack. Moreover, testing APIs may not have adequate security controls or may not have undergone rigorous testing since they were not intended for use in production environments. As such, they may have many flaws and vulnerabilities that would allow an attacker to severely disrupt a target.
- Flooding An attacker consumes the resources of a target by rapidly engaging in a large number of interactions with the target. This type of attack generally exposes a weakness in rate limiting or flow control in management of interactions. Since each request consumes some of the target's resources, if a sufficiently large number of requests must be processed at the same time then the target's resources can be exhausted. The degree to which the attack is successful depends upon the volume of requests in relation to the amount of the resource the target has access to, and other mitigating circumstances such as the target's ability to shift load or acquired additional resources to deal with the depletion. The more protected the resource and the greater the quantity of it that must be consumed, the more resources the attacker may need to have at their disposal. A typical TCP/IP flooding attack is a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack where many machines simultaneously make a large number of requests to a target. Against a target with strong defenses and a large pool of resources, many tens of thousands of attacking machines may be required. When successful this attack prevents legitimate users from accessing the service and can cause the target to crash. This attack differs from resource depletion through leaks or allocations in that the latter attacks do not rely on the volume of requests made to the target but instead focus on manipulation of the target's operations. The key factor in a flooding attack is the number of requests the attacker can make in a given period of time. The greater this number, the more likely an attack is to succeed against a given target.
- Excessive Allocation An attacker causes the target to allocate excessive resources to servicing the attackers' request, thereby reducing the resources available for legitimate services and degrading or denying services. Usually, this attack focuses on memory allocation, but any finite resource on the target could be the attacked, including bandwidth, processing cycles, or other resources. This attack does not attempt to force this allocation through a large number of requests (that would be Resource Depletion through Flooding) but instead uses one or a small number of requests that are carefully formatted to force the target to allocate excessive resources to service this request(s). Often this attack takes advantage of a bug in the target to cause the target to allocate resources vastly beyond what would be needed for a normal request. For example, using an Integer Attack, the attacker could cause a variable that controls allocation for a request to hold an excessively large value. Excessive allocation of resources can render a service degraded or unavailable to legitimate users and can even lead to crashing of the target.
- XML Ping of the Death An attacker initiates a resource depletion attack where a large number of small XML messages are delivered at a sufficiently rapid rate to cause a denial of service or crash of the target. Transactions such as repetitive SOAP transactions can deplete resources faster than a simple flooding attack because of the additional resources used by the SOAP protocol and the resources necessary to process SOAP messages. The transactions used are immaterial as long as they cause resource utilization on the target. In other words, this is a normal flooding attack augmented by using messages that will require extra processing on the target.
- XML Entity Expansion An attacker submits an XML document to a target application where the XML document uses nested entity expansion to produce an excessively large output XML. XML allows the definition of macro-like structures that can be used to simplify the creation of complex structures. However, this capability can be abused to create excessive demands on a processor's CPU and memory. A small number of nested expansions can result in an exponential growth in demands on memory.