CVE-2022-49990

Technical Description

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

s390: fix double free of GS and RI CBs on fork() failure

The pointers for guarded storage and runtime instrumentation control

blocks are stored in the thread_struct of the associated task. These

pointers are initially copied on fork() via arch_dup_task_struct()

and then cleared via copy_thread() before fork() returns. If fork()

happens to fail after the initial task dup and before copy_thread(),

the newly allocated task and associated thread_struct memory are

freed via free_task() -> arch_release_task_struct(). This results in

a double free of the guarded storage and runtime info structs

because the fields in the failed task still refer to memory

associated with the source task.

This problem can manifest as a BUG_ON() in set_freepointer() (with

CONFIG_SLAB_FREELIST_HARDENED enabled) or KASAN splat (if enabled)

when running trinity syscall fuzz tests on s390x. To avoid this

problem, clear the associated pointer field

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