Bug 2338849 (CVE-2024-57924)

Summary: CVE-2024-57924 kernel: fs: relax assertions on failure to encode file handles
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:
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:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-01-19 12:02:11 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fs: relax assertions on failure to encode file handles

Encoding file handles is usually performed by a filesystem >encode_fh()
method that may fail for various reasons.

The legacy users of exportfs_encode_fh(), namely, nfsd and
name_to_handle_at(2) syscall are ready to cope with the possibility
of failure to encode a file handle.

There are a few other users of exportfs_encode_{fh,fid}() that
currently have a WARN_ON() assertion when ->encode_fh() fails.
Relax those assertions because they are wrong.

The second linked bug report states commit 16aac5ad1fa9 ("ovl: support
encoding non-decodable file handles") in v6.6 as the regressing commit,
but this is not accurate.

The aforementioned commit only increases the chances of the assertion
and allows triggering the assertion with the reproducer using overlayfs,
inotify and drop_caches.

Triggering this assertion was always possible with other filesystems and
other reasons of ->encode_fh() failures and more particularly, it was
also possible with the exact same reproducer using overlayfs that is
mounted with options index=on,nfs_export=on also on kernels < v6.6.
Therefore, I am not listing the aforementioned commit as a Fixes commit.

Backport hint: this patch will have a trivial conflict applying to
v6.6.y, and other trivial conflicts applying to stable kernels < v6.6.

Comment 1 Avinash Hanwate 2025-01-20 05:16:21 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025011943-CVE-2024-57924-954a@gregkh/T