Bug 2320480 (CVE-2024-50018)

Summary: CVE-2024-50018 kernel: net: napi: Prevent overflow of napi_defer_hard_irqs
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
[REJECTED CVE] A vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel's networking (net: napi) subsystem, where an integer overflow in napi_defer_hard_irqs allowed writing values exceeding S32_MAX, causing unintended negative values. This could lead to unexpected behavior in NAPI IRQ deferral, potentially impacting network performance. An attacker with sysfs write access could exploit this to manipulate IRQ handling inconsistently.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 2320945    
Bug Blocks:    

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2024-10-21 19:04:48 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: napi: Prevent overflow of napi_defer_hard_irqs

In commit 6f8b12d661d0 ("net: napi: add hard irqs deferral feature")
napi_defer_irqs was added to net_device and napi_defer_irqs_count was
added to napi_struct, both as type int.

This value never goes below zero, so there is not reason for it to be a
signed int. Change the type for both from int to u32, and add an
overflow check to sysfs to limit the value to S32_MAX.

The limit of S32_MAX was chosen because the practical limit before this
patch was S32_MAX (anything larger was an overflow) and thus there are
no behavioral changes introduced. If the extra bit is needed in the
future, the limit can be raised.

Before this patch:

$ sudo bash -c 'echo 2147483649 > /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs'
$ cat /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs
-2147483647

After this patch:

$ sudo bash -c 'echo 2147483649 > /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs'
bash: line 0: echo: write error: Numerical result out of range

Similarly, /sys/class/net/XXXXX/tx_queue_len is defined as unsigned:

include/linux/netdevice.h:      unsigned int            tx_queue_len;

And has an overflow check:

dev_change_tx_queue_len(..., unsigned long new_len):

  if (new_len != (unsigned int)new_len)
          return -ERANGE;

Comment 2 TEJ RATHI 2025-02-24 11:03:27 UTC
This CVE has been rejected upstream:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2024121218-REJECTED-4a90@gregkh/

Comment 3 errata-xmlrpc 2025-05-13 08:30:03 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

Via RHSA-2025:6966 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:6966