CVE-2021-47608

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel 5.12-5.15.10 - Unprivileged Kernel Address Leak via BPF Atomic Fetch

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fix kernel address leakage in atomic fetch The change in commit 37086bfdc737 ("bpf: Propagate stack bounds to registers in atomics w/ BPF_FETCH") around check_mem_access() handling is buggy since this would allow for unprivileged users to leak kernel pointers. For example, an atomic fetch/and with -1 on a stack destination which holds a spilled pointer will migrate the spilled register type into a scalar, which can then be exported out of the program (since scalar != pointer) by dumping it into a map value. The original implementation of XADD was preventing this situation by using a double call to check_mem_access() one with BPF_READ and a subsequent one with BPF_WRITE, in both cases passing -1 as a placeholder value instead of register as per XADD semantics since it didn't contain a value fetch. The BPF_READ also included a check in check_stack_read_fixed_off() which rejects the program if the stack slot is of __is_pointer_value() if dst_regno < 0. The latter is to distinguish whether we're dealing with a regular stack spill/ fill or some arithmetical operation which is disallowed on non-scalars, see also 6e7e63cbb023 ("bpf: Forbid XADD on spilled pointers for unprivileged users") for more context on check_mem_access() and its handling of placeholder value -1. One minimally intrusive option to fix the leak is for the BPF_FETCH case to initially check the BPF_READ case via check_mem_access() with -1 as register, followed by the actual load case with non-negative load_reg to propagate stack bounds to registers.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0021
EPSS Percentile 11.4%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

Status published
Products (8)
Linux/Linux < 5.12
Linux/Linux 37086bfdc737ea6f66bf68dcf16757004d68e1e1 - 423628125a484538111c2c6d9bb1588eb086053b
Linux/Linux 37086bfdc737ea6f66bf68dcf16757004d68e1e1 - 7d3baf0afa3aa9102d6a521a8e4c41888bb79882
Linux/Linux 5.12
Linux/Linux 5.15.11 - 5.15.*
Linux/Linux 5.16
linux/linux_kernel 5.16 rc1 (5 CPE variants)
linux/linux_kernel 5.12 - 5.15.11
Published Jun 19, 2024
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026