CVE-2022-49093

skbuff: fix coalescing for page_pool fragment recycling

State
Published
Severity
9.8 Critical
Published
Feb 26, 2025
Updated
Aug 5, 2026
Reserved
Feb 26, 2025

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

skbuff: fix coalescing for page_pool fragment recycling

Fix a use-after-free when using page_pool with page fragments. We encountered this problem during normal RX in the hns3 driver:

(1) Initially we have three descriptors in the RX queue. The first one allocates PAGE1 through page_pool, and the other two allocate one half of PAGE2 each. Page references look like this:

RX_BD1 _______ PAGE1 RX_BD2 _______ PAGE2 RX_BD3 _________/

(2) Handle RX on the first descriptor. Allocate SKB1, eventually added to the receive queue by tcp_queue_rcv().

(3) Handle RX on the second descriptor. Allocate SKB2 and pass it to netif_receive_skb():

netif_receive_skb(SKB2) ip_rcv(SKB2) SKB3 = skb_clone(SKB2)

SKB2 and SKB3 share a reference to PAGE2 through skb_shinfo()->dataref. The other ref to PAGE2 is still held by RX_BD3:

SKB2 ---+- PAGE2 SKB3 __/ / RX_BD3 _________/

(3b) Now while handling TCP, coalesce SKB3 with SKB1:

tcp_v4_rcv(SKB3) tcp_try_coalesce(to=SKB1, from=SKB3) // succeeds kfree_skb_partial(SKB3) skb_release_data(SKB3) // drops one dataref

SKB1 _____ PAGE1 \____ SKB2 _____ PAGE2 / RX_BD3 _________/

In skb_try_coalesce(), __skb_frag_ref() takes a page reference to PAGE2, where it should instead have increased the page_pool frag reference, pp_frag_count. Without coalescing, when releasing both SKB2 and SKB3, a single reference to PAGE2 would be dropped. Now when releasing SKB1 and SKB2, two references to PAGE2 will be dropped, resulting in underflow.

(3c) Drop SKB2:

af_packet_rcv(SKB2) consume_skb(SKB2) skb_release_data(SKB2) // drops second dataref page_pool_return_skb_page(PAGE2) // drops one pp_frag_count

SKB1 _____ PAGE1 \____ PAGE2 / RX_BD3 _________/

(4) Userspace calls recvmsg() Copies SKB1 and releases it. Since SKB3 was coalesced with SKB1, we release the SKB3 page as well:

tcp_eat_recv_skb(SKB1) skb_release_data(SKB1) page_pool_return_skb_page(PAGE1) page_pool_return_skb_page(PAGE2) // drops second pp_frag_count

(5) PAGE2 is freed, but the third RX descriptor was still using it! In our case this causes IOMMU faults, but it would silently corrupt memory if the IOMMU was disabled.

Change the logic that checks whether pp_recycle SKBs can be coalesced. We still reject differing pp_recycle between 'from' and 'to' SKBs, but in order to avoid the situation described above, we also reject coalescing when both 'from' and 'to' are pp_recycled and 'from' is cloned.

The new logic allows coalescing a cloned pp_recycle SKB into a page refcounted one, because in this case the release (4) will drop the right reference, the one taken by skb_try_coalesce().

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.19.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 53e0961da1c7bbdabd1abebb20de403ec237ec09 to before ba965e8605aee5387cecaa28fcf7ee9f61779a49Affected
  • 53e0961da1c7bbdabd1abebb20de403ec237ec09 to before c4fa19615806a9a7e518c295b39175aa47a685acAffected
  • 53e0961da1c7bbdabd1abebb20de403ec237ec09 to before 72bb856d16e883437023ff2ff77d0c498018728aAffected
  • 53e0961da1c7bbdabd1abebb20de403ec237ec09 to before 1effe8ca4e34c34cdd9318436a4232dcb582ebf4Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.15Affected
  • before 5.15Not affected
  • 5.15.34 through 5.15.*Not affected
  • 5.16.20 through 5.16.*Not affected
  • 5.17.3 through 5.17.*Not affected
  • 5.18 and laterNot affected

References

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