Vulnerability: The mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event function in mm/memcontrol.c in the Linux kernel before 3.2.10 does not properly handle multiple events that are attached to the same eventfd, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and system crash) or possibly have unspecified other impact by registering memory threshold events.
Vulnerability ID: CVE-2012-1146
CWE: CWE-476
Severity score: 6.9
Project: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
Published: 2012-05-17
File: mm/memcontrol.c
Commit message: mm: memcg: Correct unregistring of events attached to the same eventfd

There is an issue when memcg unregisters events that were attached to
the same eventfd:

- On the first call mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event() removes all
  events attached to a given eventfd, and if there were no events left,
  thresholds->primary would become NULL;

- Since there were several events registered, cgroups core will call
  mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event() again, but now kernel will oops,
  as the function doesn't expect that threshold->primary may be NULL.

That's a good question whether mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event()
should actually remove all events in one go, but nowadays it can't
do any better as cftype->unregister_event callback doesn't pass
any private event-associated cookie. So, let's fix the issue by
simply checking for threshold->primary.

FWIW, w/o the patch the following oops may be observed:

 BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000004
 IP: [<ffffffff810be32c>] mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event+0x9c/0x1f0
 Pid: 574, comm: kworker/0:2 Not tainted 3.3.0-rc4+ #9 Bochs Bochs
 RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff810be32c>]  [<ffffffff810be32c>] mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event+0x9c/0x1f0
 RSP: 0018:ffff88001d0b9d60  EFLAGS: 00010246
 Process kworker/0:2 (pid: 574, threadinfo ffff88001d0b8000, task ffff88001de91cc0)
 Call Trace:
  [<ffffffff8107092b>] cgroup_event_remove+0x2b/0x60
  [<ffffffff8103db94>] process_one_work+0x174/0x450
  [<ffffffff8103e413>] worker_thread+0x123/0x2d0

Cc: stable <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Anton Vorontsov <anton.vorontsov@linaro.org>
Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill@shutemov.name>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Commit author: Anton Vorontsov

Vulnerable version (before fix):
 static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp, 	 */ 	BUG_ON(!thresholds);  	usage = mem_cgroup_usage(memcg, type == _MEMSWAP);  	/* Check if a threshold crossed before removing */ static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp,  	/* To be sure that nobody uses thresholds */ 	synchronize_rcu();  	mutex_unlock(&memcg->thresholds_lock); } 

Fixed version (after fix):
 static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp, 	 */ 	BUG_ON(!thresholds);  	if (!thresholds->primary) 		goto unlock;  	usage = mem_cgroup_usage(memcg, type == _MEMSWAP);  	/* Check if a threshold crossed before removing */ static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp,  	/* To be sure that nobody uses thresholds */ 	synchronize_rcu(); unlock: 	mutex_unlock(&memcg->thresholds_lock); } 

Patch:
patch: @@ -4414,6 +4414,9 @@ static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp,
 	 */
 	BUG_ON(!thresholds);
 
+	if (!thresholds->primary)
+		goto unlock;
+
 	usage = mem_cgroup_usage(memcg, type == _MEMSWAP);
 
 	/* Check if a threshold crossed before removing */
@@ -4462,7 +4465,7 @@ static void mem_cgroup_usage_unregister_event(struct cgroup *cgrp,
 
 	/* To be sure that nobody uses thresholds */
 	synchronize_rcu();
-
+unlock:
 	mutex_unlock(&memcg->thresholds_lock);
 }
path: mm/memcontrol.c