CVE-2025-21866 powerpc/code-patching: Fix KASAN hit by not flagging text patching area as VM_ALLOC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

powerpc/code-patching: Fix KASAN hit by not flagging text patching area as VM_ALLOC

Erhard reported the following KASAN hit while booting his PowerMac G4
with a KASAN-enabled kernel 6.13-rc6:

  BUG: KASAN: vmalloc-out-of-bounds in copy_to_kernel_nofault+0xd8/0x1c8
  Write of size 8 at addr f1000000 by task chronyd/1293

  CPU: 0 UID: 123 PID: 1293 Comm: chronyd Tainted: G        W          6.13.0-rc6-PMacG4 #2
  Tainted: [W]=WARN
  Hardware name: PowerMac3,6 7455 0x80010303 PowerMac
  Call Trace:
  [c2437590] [c1631a84] dump_stack_lvl+0x70/0x8c (unreliable)
  [c24375b0] [c0504998] print_report+0xdc/0x504
  [c2437610] [c050475c] kasan_report+0xf8/0x108
  [c2437690] [c0505a3c] kasan_check_range+0x24/0x18c
  [c24376a0] [c03fb5e4] copy_to_kernel_nofault+0xd8/0x1c8
  [c24376c0] [c004c014] patch_instructions+0x15c/0x16c
  [c2437710] [c00731a8] bpf_arch_text_copy+0x60/0x7c
  [c2437730] [c0281168] bpf_jit_binary_pack_finalize+0x50/0xac
  [c2437750] [c0073cf4] bpf_int_jit_compile+0xb30/0xdec
  [c2437880] [c0280394] bpf_prog_select_runtime+0x15c/0x478
  [c24378d0] [c1263428] bpf_prepare_filter+0xbf8/0xc14
  [c2437990] [c12677ec] bpf_prog_create_from_user+0x258/0x2b4
  [c24379d0] [c027111c] do_seccomp+0x3dc/0x1890
  [c2437ac0] [c001d8e0] system_call_exception+0x2dc/0x420
  [c2437f30] [c00281ac] ret_from_syscall+0x0/0x2c
  --- interrupt: c00 at 0x5a1274
  NIP:  005a1274 LR: 006a3b3c CTR: 005296c8
  REGS: c2437f40 TRAP: 0c00   Tainted: G        W           (6.13.0-rc6-PMacG4)
  MSR:  0200f932 <VEC,EE,PR,FP,ME,IR,DR,RI>  CR: 24004422  XER: 00000000

  GPR00: 00000166 af8f3fa0 a7ee3540 00000001 00000000 013b6500 005a5858 0200f932
  GPR08: 00000000 00001fe9 013d5fc8 005296c8 2822244c 00b2fcd8 00000000 af8f4b57
  GPR16: 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000002
  GPR24: 00afdbb0 00000000 00000000 00000000 006e0004 013ce060 006e7c1c 00000001
  NIP [005a1274] 0x5a1274
  LR [006a3b3c] 0x6a3b3c
  --- interrupt: c00

  The buggy address belongs to the virtual mapping at
   [f1000000, f1002000) created by:
   text_area_cpu_up+0x20/0x190

  The buggy address belongs to the physical page:
  page: refcount:1 mapcount:0 mapping:00000000 index:0x0 pfn:0x76e30
  flags: 0x80000000(zone=2)
  raw: 80000000 00000000 00000122 00000000 00000000 00000000 ffffffff 00000001
  raw: 00000000
  page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected

  Memory state around the buggy address:
   f0ffff00: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
   f0ffff80: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  >f1000000: f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8
             ^
   f1000080: f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8
   f1000100: f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8
  ==================================================================

f8 corresponds to KASAN_VMALLOC_INVALID which means the area is not
initialised hence not supposed to be used yet.

Powerpc text patching infrastructure allocates a virtual memory area
using get_vm_area() and flags it as VM_ALLOC. But that flag is meant
to be used for vmalloc() and vmalloc() allocated memory is not
supposed to be used before a call to __vmalloc_node_range() which is
never called for that area.

That went undetected until commit e4137f08816b ("mm, kasan, kmsan:
instrument copy_from/to_kernel_nofault")

The area allocated by text_area_cpu_up() is not vmalloc memory, it is
mapped directly on demand when needed by map_kernel_page(). There is
no VM flag corresponding to such usage, so just pass no flag. That way
the area will be unpoisonned and usable immediately.
Affected products: vendor: Linux
product: Linux
default_status: unaffected
vendor: Linux
product: Linux
default_status: affected
Published: 2025-03-12T09:42:22.587Z