CVE-2024-53052 - Improper Locking

Severity

44%

Complexity

8%

Confidentiality

60%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: io_uring/rw: fix missing NOWAIT check for O_DIRECT start write When io_uring starts a write, it'll call kiocb_start_write() to bump the super block rwsem, preventing any freezes from happening while that write is in-flight. The freeze side will grab that rwsem for writing, excluding any new writers from happening and waiting for existing writes to finish. But io_uring unconditionally uses kiocb_start_write(), which will block if someone is currently attempting to freeze the mount point. This causes a deadlock where freeze is waiting for previous writes to complete, but the previous writes cannot complete, as the task that is supposed to complete them is blocked waiting on starting a new write. This results in the following stuck trace showing that dependency with the write blocked starting a new write: task:fio state:D stack:0 pid:886 tgid:886 ppid:876 Call trace: __switch_to+0x1d8/0x348 __schedule+0x8e8/0x2248 schedule+0x110/0x3f0 percpu_rwsem_wait+0x1e8/0x3f8 __percpu_down_read+0xe8/0x500 io_write+0xbb8/0xff8 io_issue_sqe+0x10c/0x1020 io_submit_sqes+0x614/0x2110 __arm64_sys_io_uring_enter+0x524/0x1038 invoke_syscall+0x74/0x268 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0x160/0x238 do_el0_svc+0x44/0x60 el0_svc+0x44/0xb0 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x118/0x128 el0t_64_sync+0x168/0x170 INFO: task fsfreeze:7364 blocked for more than 15 seconds. Not tainted 6.12.0-rc5-00063-g76aaf945701c #7963 with the attempting freezer stuck trying to grab the rwsem: task:fsfreeze state:D stack:0 pid:7364 tgid:7364 ppid:995 Call trace: __switch_to+0x1d8/0x348 __schedule+0x8e8/0x2248 schedule+0x110/0x3f0 percpu_down_write+0x2b0/0x680 freeze_super+0x248/0x8a8 do_vfs_ioctl+0x149c/0x1b18 __arm64_sys_ioctl+0xd0/0x1a0 invoke_syscall+0x74/0x268 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0x160/0x238 do_el0_svc+0x44/0x60 el0_svc+0x44/0xb0 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x118/0x128 el0t_64_sync+0x168/0x170 Fix this by having the io_uring side honor IOCB_NOWAIT, and only attempt a blocking grab of the super block rwsem if it isn't set. For normal issue where IOCB_NOWAIT would always be set, this returns -EAGAIN which will have io_uring core issue a blocking attempt of the write. That will in turn also get completions run, ensuring forward progress. Since freezing requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the first place, this isn't something that can be triggered by a regular user.

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 4.4. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/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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