CVE-2024-40912 - Improper Locking

Severity

55%

Complexity

18%

Confidentiality

60%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: Fix deadlock in ieee80211_sta_ps_deliver_wakeup() The ieee80211_sta_ps_deliver_wakeup() function takes sta->ps_lock to synchronizes with ieee80211_tx_h_unicast_ps_buf() which is called from softirq context. However using only spin_lock() to get sta->ps_lock in ieee80211_sta_ps_deliver_wakeup() does not prevent softirq to execute on this same CPU, to run ieee80211_tx_h_unicast_ps_buf() and try to take this same lock ending in deadlock. Below is an example of rcu stall that arises in such situation. rcu: INFO: rcu_sched self-detected stall on CPU rcu: 2-....: (42413413 ticks this GP) idle=b154/1/0x4000000000000000 softirq=1763/1765 fqs=21206996 rcu: (t=42586894 jiffies g=2057 q=362405 ncpus=4) CPU: 2 PID: 719 Comm: wpa_supplicant Tainted: G W 6.4.0-02158-g1b062f552873 #742 Hardware name: RPT (r1) (DT) pstate: 00000005 (nzcv daif -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--) pc : queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x58/0x2d0 lr : invoke_tx_handlers_early+0x5b4/0x5c0 sp : ffff00001ef64660 x29: ffff00001ef64660 x28: ffff000009bc1070 x27: ffff000009bc0ad8 x26: ffff000009bc0900 x25: ffff00001ef647a8 x24: 0000000000000000 x23: ffff000009bc0900 x22: ffff000009bc0900 x21: ffff00000ac0e000 x20: ffff00000a279e00 x19: ffff00001ef646e8 x18: 0000000000000000 x17: ffff800016468000 x16: ffff00001ef608c0 x15: 0010533c93f64f80 x14: 0010395c9faa3946 x13: 0000000000000000 x12: 00000000fa83b2da x11: 000000012edeceea x10: ffff0000010fbe00 x9 : 0000000000895440 x8 : 000000000010533c x7 : ffff00000ad8b740 x6 : ffff00000c350880 x5 : 0000000000000007 x4 : 0000000000000001 x3 : 0000000000000000 x2 : 0000000000000000 x1 : 0000000000000001 x0 : ffff00000ac0e0e8 Call trace: queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x58/0x2d0 ieee80211_tx+0x80/0x12c ieee80211_tx_pending+0x110/0x278 tasklet_action_common.constprop.0+0x10c/0x144 tasklet_action+0x20/0x28 _stext+0x11c/0x284 ____do_softirq+0xc/0x14 call_on_irq_stack+0x24/0x34 do_softirq_own_stack+0x18/0x20 do_softirq+0x74/0x7c __local_bh_enable_ip+0xa0/0xa4 _ieee80211_wake_txqs+0x3b0/0x4b8 __ieee80211_wake_queue+0x12c/0x168 ieee80211_add_pending_skbs+0xec/0x138 ieee80211_sta_ps_deliver_wakeup+0x2a4/0x480 ieee80211_mps_sta_status_update.part.0+0xd8/0x11c ieee80211_mps_sta_status_update+0x18/0x24 sta_apply_parameters+0x3bc/0x4c0 ieee80211_change_station+0x1b8/0x2dc nl80211_set_station+0x444/0x49c genl_family_rcv_msg_doit.isra.0+0xa4/0xfc genl_rcv_msg+0x1b0/0x244 netlink_rcv_skb+0x38/0x10c genl_rcv+0x34/0x48 netlink_unicast+0x254/0x2bc netlink_sendmsg+0x190/0x3b4 ____sys_sendmsg+0x1e8/0x218 ___sys_sendmsg+0x68/0x8c __sys_sendmsg+0x44/0x84 __arm64_sys_sendmsg+0x20/0x28 do_el0_svc+0x6c/0xe8 el0_svc+0x14/0x48 el0t_64_sync_handler+0xb0/0xb4 el0t_64_sync+0x14c/0x150 Using spin_lock_bh()/spin_unlock_bh() instead prevents softirq to raise on the same CPU that is holding the lock.

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 5.5. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Demo Examples

Improper Locking

CWE-667

In the following Java snippet, methods are defined to get and set a long field in an instance of a class that is shared across multiple threads. Because operations on double and long are nonatomic in Java, concurrent access may cause unexpected behavior. Thus, all operations on long and double fields should be synchronized.


               
}
return someLongValue;
someLongValue = l;

Improper Locking

CWE-667

This code tries to obtain a lock for a file, then writes to it.


               
fclose($logFile);
}//attempt to get logfile lock
flock($logfile, LOCK_UN);// unlock logfile
print "Could not obtain lock on logFile.log, message not recorded\n";

PHP by default will wait indefinitely until a file lock is released. If an attacker is able to obtain the file lock, this code will pause execution, possibly leading to denial of service for other users. Note that in this case, if an attacker can perform an flock() on the file, they may already have privileges to destroy the log file. However, this still impacts the execution of other programs that depend on flock().

Improper Locking

CWE-667

The following function attempts to acquire a lock in order to perform operations on a shared resource.


               
}
pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);/* access shared resource */

However, the code does not check the value returned by pthread_mutex_lock() for errors. If pthread_mutex_lock() cannot acquire the mutex for any reason the function may introduce a race condition into the program and result in undefined behavior.

In order to avoid data races correctly written programs must check the result of thread synchronization functions and appropriately handle all errors, either by attempting to recover from them or reporting it to higher levels.


               
}
return pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);
return result;
/* access shared resource */

Improper Locking

CWE-667

It may seem that the following bit of code achieves thread safety while avoiding unnecessary synchronization...


               
return helper;
}
}
helper = new Helper();

The programmer wants to guarantee that only one Helper() object is ever allocated, but does not want to pay the cost of synchronization every time this code is called.

Suppose that helper is not initialized. Then, thread A sees that helper==null and enters the synchronized block and begins to execute:


               
helper = new Helper();

If a second thread, thread B, takes over in the middle of this call and helper has not finished running the constructor, then thread B may make calls on helper while its fields hold incorrect values.

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