CVE-2018-17182 (published 2018-09-19T09:29Z)

An issue was discovered in the Linux kernel through 4.18.8. The vmacache_flush_all function in mm/vmacache.c mishandles sequence number overflows. An attacker can trigger a use-after-free (and possibly gain privileges) via certain thread creation, map, unmap, invalidation, and dereference operations.

Severity: HIGH
CVSS v2 base score: 7.2 (AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C)
CVSS v3 base score: 7.8, HIGH (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Weakness information:
cwe_id: CWE-416
cwe_name: Use After Free
description: The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.
extended_description: 
             
             
             
			 
             
             
         
         

Fix information:
repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
author: Linus Torvalds
author_date: 2018-09-12 23:57:48-10:00
msg: mm: get rid of vmacache_flush_all() entirely

Jann Horn points out that the vmacache_flush_all() function is not only
potentially expensive, it's buggy too.  It also happens to be entirely
unnecessary, because the sequence number overflow case can be avoided by
simply making the sequence number be 64-bit.  That doesn't even grow the
data structures in question, because the other adjacent fields are
already 64-bit.

So simplify the whole thing by just making the sequence number overflow
case go away entirely, which gets rid of all the complications and makes
the code faster too.  Win-win.

[ Oleg Nesterov points out that the VMACACHE_FULL_FLUSHES statistics
  also just goes away entirely with this ]

Reported-by: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Suggested-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Acked-by: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
repo_name: torvalds/linux
description: Linux kernel source tree
repo_language: C
owner: torvalds
file_changes: filename: mm_types.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -341,7 +341,7 @@ struct mm_struct {
 	struct {
 		struct vm_area_struct *mmap;		/* list of VMAs */
 		struct rb_root mm_rb;
-		u32 vmacache_seqnum;                   /* per-thread vmacache */
+		u64 vmacache_seqnum;                   /* per-thread vmacache */
 #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
 		unsigned long (*get_unmapped_area) (struct file *filp,
 				unsigned long addr, unsigned long len,

programming_language: C
filename: mm_types_task.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
 #define VMACACHE_MASK (VMACACHE_SIZE - 1)
 
 struct vmacache {
-	u32 seqnum;
+	u64 seqnum;
 	struct vm_area_struct *vmas[VMACACHE_SIZE];
 };
 

programming_language: C
filename: vm_event_item.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -105,7 +105,6 @@ enum vm_event_item { PGPGIN, PGPGOUT, PSWPIN, PSWPOUT,
 #ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_VM_VMACACHE
 		VMACACHE_FIND_CALLS,
 		VMACACHE_FIND_HITS,
-		VMACACHE_FULL_FLUSHES,
 #endif
 #ifdef CONFIG_SWAP
 		SWAP_RA,

programming_language: C
filename: vmacache.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ static inline void vmacache_flush(struct task_struct *tsk)
 	memset(tsk->vmacache.vmas, 0, sizeof(tsk->vmacache.vmas));
 }
 
-extern void vmacache_flush_all(struct mm_struct *mm);
 extern void vmacache_update(unsigned long addr, struct vm_area_struct *newvma);
 extern struct vm_area_struct *vmacache_find(struct mm_struct *mm,
 						    unsigned long addr);
@@ -24,10 +23,6 @@ extern struct vm_area_struct *vmacache_find_exact(struct mm_struct *mm,
 static inline void vmacache_invalidate(struct mm_struct *mm)
 {
 	mm->vmacache_seqnum++;
-
-	/* deal with overflows */
-	if (unlikely(mm->vmacache_seqnum == 0))
-		vmacache_flush_all(mm);
 }
 
 #endif /* __LINUX_VMACACHE_H */

programming_language: C
filename: debug.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(dump_vma);
 
 void dump_mm(const struct mm_struct *mm)
 {
-	pr_emerg("mm %px mmap %px seqnum %d task_size %lu\n"
+	pr_emerg("mm %px mmap %px seqnum %llu task_size %lu\n"
 #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
 		"get_unmapped_area %px\n"
 #endif
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ void dump_mm(const struct mm_struct *mm)
 		"tlb_flush_pending %d\n"
 		"def_flags: %#lx(%pGv)\n",
 
-		mm, mm->mmap, mm->vmacache_seqnum, mm->task_size,
+		mm, mm->mmap, (long long) mm->vmacache_seqnum, mm->task_size,
 #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
 		mm->get_unmapped_area,
 #endif

programming_language: C
filename: vmacache.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -19,44 +19,6 @@
 #endif
 #define VMACACHE_HASH(addr) ((addr >> VMACACHE_SHIFT) & VMACACHE_MASK)
 
-/*
- * Flush vma caches for threads that share a given mm.
- *
- * The operation is safe because the caller holds the mmap_sem
- * exclusively and other threads accessing the vma cache will
- * have mmap_sem held at least for read, so no extra locking
- * is required to maintain the vma cache.
- */
-void vmacache_flush_all(struct mm_struct *mm)
-{
-	struct task_struct *g, *p;
-
-	count_vm_vmacache_event(VMACACHE_FULL_FLUSHES);
-
-	/*
-	 * Single threaded tasks need not iterate the entire
-	 * list of process. We can avoid the flushing as well
-	 * since the mm's seqnum was increased and don't have
-	 * to worry about other threads' seqnum. Current's
-	 * flush will occur upon the next lookup.
-	 */
-	if (atomic_read(&mm->mm_users) == 1)
-		return;
-
-	rcu_read_lock();
-	for_each_process_thread(g, p) {
-		/*
-		 * Only flush the vmacache pointers as the
-		 * mm seqnum is already set and curr's will
-		 * be set upon invalidation when the next
-		 * lookup is done.
-		 */
-		if (mm == p->mm)
-			vmacache_flush(p);
-	}
-	rcu_read_unlock();
-}
-
 /*
  * This task may be accessing a foreign mm via (for example)
  * get_user_pages()->find_vma().  The vmacache is task-local and this

programming_language: C