CVE-2025-21922

ppp: Fix KMSAN uninit-value warning with bpf

State
Published
Severity
5.5 Medium
Published
Apr 1, 2025
Updated
May 11, 2026
Reserved
Dec 29, 2024

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

ppp: Fix KMSAN uninit-value warning with bpf

Syzbot caught an "KMSAN: uninit-value" warning [1], which is caused by the ppp driver not initializing a 2-byte header when using socket filter.

The following code can generate a PPP filter BPF program: ''' struct bpf_program fp; pcap_t *handle; handle = pcap_open_dead(DLT_PPP_PPPD, 65535); pcap_compile(handle, &fp, "ip and outbound", 0, 0); bpf_dump(&fp, 1); ''' Its output is: ''' (000) ldh [2] (001) jeq #0x21 jt 2 jf 5 (002) ldb [0] (003) jeq #0x1 jt 4 jf 5 (004) ret #65535 (005) ret #0 ''' Wen can find similar code at the following link: https://github.com/ppp-project/ppp/blob/master/pppd/options.c#L1680 The maintainer of this code repository is also the original maintainer of the ppp driver.

As you can see the BPF program skips 2 bytes of data and then reads the 'Protocol' field to determine if it's an IP packet. Then it read the first byte of the first 2 bytes to determine the direction.

The issue is that only the first byte indicating direction is initialized in current ppp driver code while the second byte is not initialized.

For normal BPF programs generated by libpcap, uninitialized data won't be used, so it's not a problem. However, for carefully crafted BPF programs, such as those generated by syzkaller [2], which start reading from offset 0, the uninitialized data will be used and caught by KMSAN.

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=853242d9c9917165d791 [2] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/text?tag=ReproC&x=11994913980000

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.5 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

  • CWE-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before d685096c8129c9a92689975193e268945fd21dbfAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 2f591cb158807bdcf424f66f1fbfa6e4e50f3757Affected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 4e2191b0fd0c064d37b0db67396216f2d4787e0fAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 3de809a768464528762757e433cd50de35bcb3c1Affected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 1eacd47636a9de5bee25d9d5962dc538a82d9f0bAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 8aa8a40c766b3945b40565a70349d5581458ff63Affected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before c036f5f2680cbdabdbbace86baee3c83721634d6Affected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 4c2d14c40a68678d885eab4008a0129646805baeAffected
LinuxLinux
  • 2.6.12Affected
  • before 2.6.12Not affected
  • 5.4.291 through 5.4.*Not affected
  • 5.10.235 through 5.10.*Not affected
  • 5.15.179 through 5.15.*Not affected
  • 6.1.131 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.6.83 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.19 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.13.7 through 6.13.*Not affected
  • 6.14 and laterNot affected

References

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