CVE-2024-46851 - NULL Pointer Dereference

Severity

47%

Complexity

10%

Confidentiality

60%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/amd/display: Avoid race between dcn10_set_drr() and dc_state_destruct() dc_state_destruct() nulls the resource context of the DC state. The pipe context passed to dcn10_set_drr() is a member of this resource context. If dc_state_destruct() is called parallel to the IRQ processing (which calls dcn10_set_drr() at some point), we can end up using already nulled function callback fields of struct stream_resource. The logic in dcn10_set_drr() already tries to avoid this, by checking tg against NULL. But if the nulling happens exactly after the NULL check and before the next access, then we get a race. Avoid this by copying tg first to a local variable, and then use this variable for all the operations. This should work, as long as nobody frees the resource pool where the timing generators live. (cherry picked from commit a3cc326a43bdc48fbdf53443e1027a03e309b643)

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 4.7. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: high. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Demo Examples

NULL Pointer Dereference

CWE-476

While there are no complete fixes aside from conscientious programming, the following steps will go a long way to ensure that NULL pointer dereferences do not occur.


               
}
/* make use of pointer1 *//* ... */

If you are working with a multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous environment, ensure that proper locking APIs are used to lock before the if statement; and unlock when it has finished.

NULL Pointer Dereference

CWE-476

This example takes an IP address from a user, verifies that it is well formed and then looks up the hostname and copies it into a buffer.


               
}
strcpy(hostname, hp->h_name);/*routine that ensures user_supplied_addr is in the right format for conversion */

If an attacker provides an address that appears to be well-formed, but the address does not resolve to a hostname, then the call to gethostbyaddr() will return NULL. Since the code does not check the return value from gethostbyaddr (CWE-252), a NULL pointer dereference would then occur in the call to strcpy().

Note that this example is also vulnerable to a buffer overflow (see CWE-119).

NULL Pointer Dereference

CWE-476

In the following code, the programmer assumes that the system always has a property named "cmd" defined. If an attacker can control the program's environment so that "cmd" is not defined, the program throws a NULL pointer exception when it attempts to call the trim() method.


               
cmd = cmd.trim();

NULL Pointer Dereference

CWE-476

This application has registered to handle a URL when sent an intent:


               
}......
}
}
int length = URL.length();
...

The application assumes the URL will always be included in the intent. When the URL is not present, the call to getStringExtra() will return null, thus causing a null pointer exception when length() is called.

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