Vulnerabilities > CVE-2024-55642 - Improper Locking vulnerability in Linux Kernel
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: block: Prevent potential deadlocks in zone write plug error recovery Zone write plugging for handling writes to zones of a zoned block device always execute a zone report whenever a write BIO to a zone fails. The intent of this is to ensure that the tracking of a zone write pointer is always correct to ensure that the alignment to a zone write pointer of write BIOs can be checked on submission and that we can always correctly emulate zone append operations using regular write BIOs. However, this error recovery scheme introduces a potential deadlock if a device queue freeze is initiated while BIOs are still plugged in a zone write plug and one of these write operation fails. In such case, the disk zone write plug error recovery work is scheduled and executes a report zone. This in turn can result in a request allocation in the underlying driver to issue the report zones command to the device. But with the device queue freeze already started, this allocation will block, preventing the report zone execution and the continuation of the processing of the plugged BIOs. As plugged BIOs hold a queue usage reference, the queue freeze itself will never complete, resulting in a deadlock. Avoid this problem by completely removing from the zone write plugging code the use of report zones operations after a failed write operation, instead relying on the device user to either execute a report zones, reset the zone, finish the zone, or give up writing to the device (which is a fairly common pattern for file systems which degrade to read-only after write failures). This is not an unreasonnable requirement as all well-behaved applications, FSes and device mapper already use report zones to recover from write errors whenever possible by comparing the current position of a zone write pointer with what their assumption about the position is. The changes to remove the automatic error recovery are as follows: - Completely remove the error recovery work and its associated resources (zone write plug list head, disk error list, and disk zone_wplugs_work work struct). This also removes the functions disk_zone_wplug_set_error() and disk_zone_wplug_clear_error(). - Change the BLK_ZONE_WPLUG_ERROR zone write plug flag into BLK_ZONE_WPLUG_NEED_WP_UPDATE. This new flag is set for a zone write plug whenever a write opration targetting the zone of the zone write plug fails. This flag indicates that the zone write pointer offset is not reliable and that it must be updated when the next report zone, reset zone, finish zone or disk revalidation is executed. - Modify blk_zone_write_plug_bio_endio() to set the BLK_ZONE_WPLUG_NEED_WP_UPDATE flag for the target zone of a failed write BIO. - Modify the function disk_zone_wplug_set_wp_offset() to clear this new flag, thus implementing recovery of a correct write pointer offset with the reset (all) zone and finish zone operations. - Modify blkdev_report_zones() to always use the disk_report_zones_cb() callback so that disk_zone_wplug_sync_wp_offset() can be called for any zone marked with the BLK_ZONE_WPLUG_NEED_WP_UPDATE flag. This implements recovery of a correct write pointer offset for zone write plugs marked with BLK_ZONE_WPLUG_NEED_WP_UPDATE and within the range of the report zones operation executed by the user. - Modify blk_revalidate_seq_zone() to call disk_zone_wplug_sync_wp_offset() for all sequential write required zones when a zoned block device is revalidated, thus always resolving any inconsistency between the write pointer offset of zone write plugs and the actual write pointer position of sequential zones.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Leveraging Race Conditions This attack targets a race condition occurring when multiple processes access and manipulate the same resource concurrently and the outcome of the execution depends on the particular order in which the access takes place. The attacker can leverage a race condition by "running the race", modifying the resource and modifying the normal execution flow. For instance a race condition can occur while accessing a file, the attacker can trick the system by replacing the original file with his version and cause the system to read the malicious file.
- Leveraging Race Conditions via Symbolic Links This attack leverages the use of symbolic links (Symlinks) in order to write to sensitive files. An attacker can create a Symlink link to a target file not otherwise accessible to her. When the privileged program tries to create a temporary file with the same name as the Symlink link, it will actually write to the target file pointed to by the attackers' Symlink link. If the attacker can insert malicious content in the temporary file she will be writing to the sensitive file by using the Symlink. The race occurs because the system checks if the temporary file exists, then creates the file. The attacker would typically create the Symlink during the interval between the check and the creation of the temporary file.