CVE-2021-47607

Technical Description

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

bpf: Fix kernel address leakage in atomic cmpxchg's r0 aux reg

The implementation of BPF_CMPXCHG on a high level has the following parameters:

.-[old-val] .-[new-val]

BPF_R0 = cmpxchg{32,64}(DST_REG + insn->off, BPF_R0, SRC_REG)

`-[mem-loc] `-[old-val]

Given a BPF insn can only have two registers (dst, src), the R0 is fixed and

used as an auxilliary register for input (old value) as well as output (returning

old value from memory location). While the verifier performs a number of safety

checks, it misses to reject unprivileged programs where R0 contains a pointer as

old value.

Through brute-forcing it takes about ~16sec on my machine to leak a kernel pointer

with BPF_CMPXCHG. The PoC is basically probing for kernel addresses by storing the

guessed address into the map slot as a scalar, and using the map value pointer as

R0 while SRC_RE

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References