In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
blk-cgroup: Fix NULL deref caused by blkg_policy_data being installed before init
blk-iocost sometimes causes the following crash:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000000e0 ... RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_lock+0x17/0x30 Code: be 01 02 00 00 e8 79 38 39 ff 31 d2 89 d0 5d c3 0f 1f 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 48 89 e5 65 ff 05 48 d0 34 7e b9 01 00 00 00 31 c0 <f0> 0f b1 0f 75 02 5d c3 89 c6 e8 ea 04 00 00 5d c3 0f 1f 84 00 00 RSP: 0018:ffffc900023b3d40 EFLAGS: 00010046 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 00000000000000e0 RCX: 0000000000000001 RDX: ffffc900023b3d20 RSI: ffffc900023b3cf0 RDI: 00000000000000e0 RBP: ffffc900023b3d40 R08: ffffc900023b3c10 R09: 0000000000000003 R10: 0000000000000064 R11: 000000000000000a R12: ffff888102337000 R13: fffffffffffffff2 R14: ffff88810af408c8 R15: ffff8881070c3600 FS: 00007faaaf364fc0(0000) GS:ffff88842fdc0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00000000000000e0 CR3: 00000001097b1000 CR4: 0000000000350ea0 Call Trace: <TASK> ioc_weight_write+0x13d/0x410 cgroup_file_write+0x7a/0x130 kernfs_fop_write_iter+0xf5/0x170 vfs_write+0x298/0x370 ksys_write+0x5f/0xb0 __x64_sys_write+0x1b/0x20 do_syscall_64+0x3d/0x80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x46/0xb0
This happens because iocg->ioc is NULL. The field is initialized by ioc_pd_init() and never cleared. The NULL deref is caused by blkcg_activate_policy() installing blkg_policy_data before initializing it.
blkcg_activate_policy() was doing the following:
blkcg_activate_policy() only grabs the queue_lock and may release and re-acquire the lock as allocation may need to sleep. ioc_weight_write() grabs blkcg->lock and iterates all its blkg's. The two can race and if ioc_weight_write() runs during #1 or...