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In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fail bpf_timer_cancel when callback is being cancelled Given a schedule: timer1 cb timer2 cb bpf_timer_cancel(timer2); bpf_timer_cancel(timer1); Both bpf_timer_cancel calls would wait for the other callback to finish executing, introducing a lockup. Add an atomic_t count named 'cancelling' in bpf_hrtimer. This keeps track of all in-flight cancellation requests for a given BPF timer. Whenever cancelling a BPF timer, we must check if we have outstanding cancellation requests, and if so, we must fail the operation with an error (-EDEADLK) since cancellation is synchronous and waits for the callback to finish executing. This implies that we can enter a deadlock situation involving two or more timer callbacks executing in parallel and attempting to cancel one another. Note that we avoid incrementing the cancelling counter for the target timer (the one being cancelled) if bpf_timer_cancel is not invoked from a callback, to avoid spurious errors. The whole point of detecting cur->cancelling and returning -EDEADLK is to not enter a busy wait loop (which may or may not lead to a lockup). This does not apply in case the caller is in a non-callback context, the other side can continue to cancel as it sees fit without running into errors. Background on prior attempts: Earlier versions of this patch used a bool 'cancelling' bit and used the following pattern under timer->lock to publish cancellation status. lock(t->lock); t->cancelling = true; mb(); if (cur->cancelling) return -EDEADLK; unlock(t->lock); hrtimer_cancel(t->timer); t->cancelling = false; The store outside the critical section could overwrite a parallel requests t->cancelling assignment to true, to ensure the parallely executing callback observes its cancellation status. It would be necessary to clear this cancelling bit once hrtimer_cancel is done, but lack of serialization introduced races. Another option was explored where bpf_timer_start would clear the bit when (re)starting the timer under timer->lock. This would ensure serialized access to the cancelling bit, but may allow it to be cleared before in-flight hrtimer_cancel has finished executing, such that lockups can occur again. Thus, we choose an atomic counter to keep track of all outstanding cancellation requests and use it to prevent lockups in case callbacks attempt to cancel each other while executing in parallel.
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).
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;This code tries to obtain a lock for a file, then writes to it.
fclose($logFile);}//attempt to get logfile lockflock($logfile, LOCK_UN);// unlock logfileprint "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().
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 */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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